Leaf theme blog post won't display posts

Hi guys,
We have created a child theme of the leaf theme.

The aim is to have the blog as the homepage.
We have added two test blog posts and they only show in the slidebar.
In ‘leaf options’ we have set the ‘number of more articles’ to 8. Still the posts don’t show.

I’ve read through a number of post in forums regarding this but still haven’t found the answer.

The demo of leaf seems even more confusing. The homepage appears to be a blog as well as another page which is the blog.

Basically all we wish to create is a homepage that is also the blog, slider underneath the title, then the most recent 7 or 8 blog posts underneath.

Any hints or tips would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Shaun