how can I get images/posts on part of the homepage

ok- here’s what I’ve got so far. The problem I am having is styling the posts excerpts. I checked the Codex and didn’t quite understand the post_class – that seems to be what I need to work on. Does anyone know of a more detailed tutorial? Here’s what I am trying to do (look at the bottom right side).
How do I get rid of the list bullets? Can’t figure that one our either.

Thanks for any help.

I’ve made a little progress but I’m still stuck on how to style the contents of the loop so that there is a separation in the background. Any suggestions?

To do that you’d want to have

div.post-excerpt {
background: none;
}

div.post-excerpt li {
background: #31363E;
margin-bottom:5px;
}

basically move your background from the container to the actual list item, then add some margin to that list item too.

Thanks Ganners – that did it.