Help for a new guy!

Hey all:
I’ am brand new to wordpress and have been anxiously working on my site over the past few days. The url is http://www.rightway.info it is a conservative web blog. I was hoping to get some help/advice. First of all, I cant seem to get the banner up top to look good. I want the color of the background to be the same as the side menu and for some reason it wont work even when i use the same hexadecimal color. I also want the footer to be the same color.
I want to add a tag board. Any suggestions? I was going to remove the calendar (is that possible) and place the tag board there. Also how do I install the tag board.
Next, I want to shrink the size of the actual post font and have it set up to where theres a box around each individual post rather than the dashed lines above and below.
Finally, Im looking for a cool site counter that actually posts the number of hits on the site. Are there any site counters available that track ips as well?
Thanks so much!