Custom content on index page

Hi folks,

I searched through the forums and documentation, but couldn’t find anything that answered my question.

Basically what I want to do is put my own content on the index page, just as I’m doing with all of the other added pages I’ve created. In other words, I want it to use the same theme, have the same header, footer, sidebars, etc. but display text and images of my choosing in the content area instead of just a list of posts (in fact, I don’t want any posts listed).

It seems odd to me that you can create a new page and add whatever content you want to it, but you can’t control what appears on the homepage.