General Format changes on Twenty Eleven

Poking around at reading documentation and forums plus trying to understand all this code for two weeks has left me basically where I started so I’m looking for some help from Step 2.5

Where I am:
I’m all set up with the Twenty Eleven Theme and a mySQL db and admin all set up and even some categories and a widget or two. I can look at the Blog (that’s what I’m going to do, nothing fancy, just a place to write a little essay and have people comment back) either directly as a WordPress page or the way I really want it where I’ve got it somewhat reduced as a frame within my master Web site (outside the frame providing the look of the rest of the Web site.)

I’ve set up a TwentyEleven Child Theme with a barebones style.css and function.php file. On my Dashboard I activated the child (something one wants to do cautiously when dealing with the human kind of child) and it is now controlling the presentation of my blog (ditto the human child taking precedence over the parent!?).

I’ve even loaded up Firebug which is great in showing me some things that could be done but not what to change.

What I want to change about WordPress/TwentyEleven:
But I’d like slight changes to the way the page presents and haven’t broken the code for what changes what so am looking for specific code and places to put it to accomplish the following-

– Don’t really want any images, rotating or not. Don’t want the vertical space that allowed for the images either.

– I don’t need the Title or Tag displayed or the space allowed to display those either (that’ll be otherwise in the main Web page outside of this frame – for consistency with the total Web site). However, since search engines etc may key on discovery of a blog title and tag I want the SE to still find me so maybe I need to make that in white 5pt font where a person won’t find it but the search servers will. Yes/no and how would I do that little coding?

– There’s a big what-I’ll-call field that this all sits in that goes to the edges of the browser window, a pale grey. There seems to be some minimum to that (maybe 30-40 px) that remains no matter how small the window. How do I get rid of that (this may be called Padding but padding to what, I can’t figure out) I want zip there (again my greater Web page provides all that)

– I know its heresy (or is it Hershey’s?) but what if I didn’t want a Menu bar either? Can I suppress that? (you can log in on the sidebar and my Web site provides all the other static pages, about, etc.) I may find I want to bring this back as time goes on but I’d think I could just not display it at will.

– So generally I want to start with the blog content: the story, the comments/feedback and over on the sidebar is the categories, tags, meta, etc. But I’d like to make small changes to that look like:
— Font type, size, style of the article title
— Font type, size, style of the comments and time/date etc
— Make the main column wider, taking away from the sidebar
— Change the margin width (white space from column edge to text) in main and side columns (maybe top, left, bottom & right all different — I haven’t even figured out if 4 numbers are given which is top, L, R, or bottom)

So, I hope I’ve given enough information that someone could spend about :10 and say sure we know TwentyEleven like the back of our hand and this stuff is simple, here’s the way to effect your changes.

Anybody want to guide my shaky hand? Thanks