Active header and post titles without hover

We love the simplicity of the theme, but there are a couple of tweaks we’d like to make for our magazine and would appreciate your feedback on how to edit:

1) We would like to keep the logo and navigation bar fully visible at all times, without the need to rollover; and

2) It would be really useful for our readers to see the titles of each post when rolling over the images. At present, they can only see the titles on posts that do not have a featured image.

Hope to hear from you soon!
With thanks.
Misty