Working with pages

I am using theme Twenty Eleven and I can’t get a handle on using pages to get them to work the way I want them to.So far, working with the blog post page,-and getting it. However, I’m trying to create a separate page that is not a blog, and is not connected to the blog, but has its own link to it from the menu and a link from within the blog page. This page needs to be formatted separately in the blog page,-there will be no side columns in it. But every time I tried to do this it answers the page on top of the blog page as one continuous line page and screws up they look of the blog page which is now beneath it. I can click on the menu to return back to the blog page and when I do it looks fine. It is as though I am unable to separate the creation of a page from creating a blog page with a different format. I’m completely lost with this.

Basically, all I want to do is create a separate independent page that has its own formatting and is independent of the blog page. It can be accessed only by clicking on a link in the menu and a link to the page from within the blog page itself.

If this sounds confusing, it’s because I’m confused. Sorry, can someone help me with this. Please try to keep it simple.

By-the-way, I have the multisite feature turned on if it makes a difference. I intend to expand to this feature as I learn what I am doing with WordPress.