Stripped the dashboard, now how add a welcome?

I have been looking through the past posts about the dashboard, many people seem to be looking for a blank face for their dashboard, I am one of them! I stripped it back to nothing:

<?php
require_once(‘admin.php’);
$title = __(‘Dashboard’);
require_once(‘admin-header.php’);
require_once (ABSPATH . WPINC . ‘/rss-functions.php’);

$today = current_time(‘mysql’, 1);

?>

All i want to do now is add a short ‘welcome’ and a link to make a post, prehaps a picture underneath My php is not too hot, can anyone help with a little bit of code.

a cheeky thanks