I think you are going a great job of helping people find solutions to their problems, so don't knock yourself too much there! And sometimes it only takes someone else to help ask the right questions that will unlock the answer in your own brain, so there are no good or bad questions.
Based on what you have said, I'm still slightly confused, but I think you are wanting to create a customizable template you can change at will that will place text, images in different locations based on what you want at any given time.
You are also wanting to have a comment and member section that allows for archives of older posts. Based on this last section, I would point you in the direction of WordPress, one of the more popular blog systems out there. The good news here is it provides everyting you are looking for, and has a large enough user base that it won't be difficult to find any number of themes (templates) that will make your site as unique as possible.
However, if you don't want to go for a "cookie-cutter" type program such as WordPress, then customization is the only real option left. It isn't a bad option, but it will take time to learn everything you will have to learn.
The easiest way to create several templates for your site, which will allow you to move logos, images, change fonts and other layour options, is to create individual CSS files. One for each way you want your site to look.
There are two things you will have to do for this to work:
1. Design your HTML to accomodate different style sheets. Basically:
<html>
<head>
<title>Eskimoethics.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="header">
<h1>Eskimo Ethics</h1>
<div id="logo><img src="images/logo.jpg" /></div>
</div>
<div id="menu"><!--menu items here--></div>
<div id="content">
<div class="section_title"><h3>content goes here</h3></div>
<div class="section_text"><p>blog post goes here</p></div>
</div>
<div id="footer"><!--footer, a.k.a. copyright, goes here-->
</div>
</body>
</html>
From here, you create your style sheet to reflect the layout options you want to assign to this html code. You should be able to create a seperate style sheet, each with very different looks without changing anything in your html, based on the example given above. I won't go into the inner workings of CSS, but I hope you get the idea from this.
~regards