How to: Portfolio as pages, and blog?

Hi all,

So I’ve dabbled with WP a fair bit but I’m not a coder. I’ve built a portfolio website completely in HTML+CSS. Now I want on the front page to load in the four latest projects I’ve worked on, and for the front homepage also to display the latest blog post.

I’ve attached visuals of how I want it to work. The front page looks like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36843244@N07/4989895228/sizes/l/

The top row is where the portfolio thumbnails will live.

When you click through it will take you through to the actual portfolio page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36843244@N07/4989895236/sizes/l/

When I post each portfolio item, I want to be able to upload several images but only display the thumbnail on the homepage, but display an image slider with other images of the portfolio item on there.

Would it be easy to set up the portfolio items as pages rather than blog posts, and keep the blog completely seperate? And how would I display the portfolio items to the homepage?

Any help would be greatly appreciated