My question is this: can I create the navigation using widgets instead of creating a custom menu with parent and child pages?

Yes, you can create a custom menu in Appearance → Menus and then add a "Custom Menu Widget" to the sidebar to show that menu.

Here are the related help pages for those two things in case they help:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/custom-menu-widget/

@corollamom3, I bet we can fix up the ribbon issue if you want to try. If you do, please create a new help request and make sure to include a link to your blog.

My question is this: can I create the navigation using widgets instead of creating a custom menu with parent and child pages?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

I am using the Delicacy theme and was trying to delete the ribbon and the bottom part of the standard header.

First, I think you need to get your menus in order. It looks like you created two separate menus, but both are currently empty. If you look at Appearance → Menus → Manage Locations, you'll see "side main menu" selected for the main (top) navigation. You probably wanted to set that to "Top Menu" instead. Which ever menu you decide to choose there, go back to the "Edit Menus" tab and select the one you picked in the other tab. Ahhhh, now I see part o the problem. You've set every post to be private. You can't add private posts or pages to menus. They have to be published first. You can do that and still keep the blog itself private so no one can see it if you go to Settings → Reading and change the "Site Visibility" option to the option that says, "I would like my site to be private, visible only to users I choose."

It seems like you've bumped into an unfortunate sequence of events that conspired against you! Keep at it though, once you get it untangled after this, it should be much easier!

I also would like for it to tell me if the code should go all on one line or be spread across multiple lines.

Good feedback. I wonder if this should be covered in tutorials and not in the welcome comment. I feel like there are a lot of basics that could be covered, and it's hard to pick out the right best ones when you want to keep an intro message very short!

In your example above it looks like it spans 3 lines - is this necessary, and why?

It's more readable that way. Proper spacing for any kind of code is a best practice that will help you if you continue to use it and if you collaborate with others (or ask for help in forums). In general, it's a good idea to have good code formatting. Check out this related page about CSS coding standards in WordPress:
http://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/coding-standards/css/

Or could you put it all in one line and it would have the same effect?

It would have the same effect. Actually, many sites, including WordPress.com, minify the CSS later so it's all on one line. It's more efficient for servers to read the CSS that way, but it's better to give any CSS that humans read better spacing than that. :)

I think the default message is ok but it should tell the user to replace the text with theirs but leave the /* there on either end (if that is, in fact what you are supposed to do...as I said, I'm still not sure)

The /* indicates the start of a comment.

/* This is an example of a CSS comment. */

Lafemmelatina, I would suggest starting with seeing how the background color changes - in firefox, right click on your page and select 'inspect element'. The css code shows up on the right hand side. On my site, one of the first codes I get is

body.custom-background {
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
}

with 255,255,255 being white. So if you change one of those numbers to say 0 or 20 or 100, you'll get a different color background.

That's the kind of baby step I was looking for just to see if I was heading down the right street - I hope this helps you too!

But...I tried the little snippet you provided - my front page didn't have any text in it, but I added some text in. It tells me it saved, and is published, but the words don't turn to red. So, although I think I'm doing it right, it's just not changing anything. I have access to a mac so I am going to try on that but I don't think it's my computer...I am using firefox 20 and yesterday in an attempt to get the preview going, support had me clear cookies, cache, run all the tests and so on and so on. I'm stumped as to why I'm not getting anything at all in the preview, with your code or the mine that I tried above.

body.custom-background {
    background-color:blue;
}

Note that it's tricky but not impossible to figure out once you get the hang of how to find which CSS selectors to use. One of the best ways to do that is to use your browser's web inspector tool. To activate it, right click on any element (i.e. the body element) and select "Inspect Element." It should pull up a panel with the HTML for what you clicked on as well as all the CSS that applies to it. You can usually find a selector in the CSS that is just the one you'll need to make the update you want. Here is an example: http://f.cl.ly/items/201h1T0T2I1b463t2P2F/Screen%20Shot%202013-04-26%20at%209.11.26%20PM.png

Getting back to your request, it sounds like what you want is a basic CSS tutorial in general. I think this one is a good one for getting started:
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/cssbeginner/

Editing CSS is not always a simple thing to thing to break into if you're not already familiar with HTML, so a basic HTML would also be a good thing to cover:
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/html/beginner/

And if you're just looking for a simple example to try out in the Appearance → Themes → Customize → CSS panel, one that I usually test with is turning all the paragraphs red in a preview (just so you can see the change working), here is a CSS snippet for that:

p {
     color: red;
}

body
{
background-color:blue;
}

I save this, and it tells me it's saved, but then my background doesn't change to blue.

If you are able to share any baby steps I would appreciate them too!

See: http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/editing-css/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/custom-fonts/

See also: http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/where-is-the-theme-css-and-how-do-i-edit-it/

If you are not successful when searching then there is a link for the specific Premium Theme support forum for your theme under Appearance -> Themes in your blog’s Dashboard, but do note that the premium theme must be active and you must be signed in as the user who purchased it in order to see it and post to it.

Thanks, Unni Holtedahl

If you are not successful when searching then there is a link for the specific Premium Theme support forum for your theme under Appearance -> Themes in your blog’s Dashboard, but do note that the premium theme must be active and you must be signed in as the user who purchased it in order to see it and post to it.

If you are not successful when searching then there is a link for the specific Premium Theme support forum for your theme under Appearance -> Themes in your blog’s Dashboard, but do note that the premium theme must be active and you must be signed in as the user who purchased it in order to see it and post to it.

I imported posts from blogger to wordpress using the Magazine theme after I had tried other themes. I think the template change at some point before I made my last import as my front page is nothing like the demo.
All of my posts show up in archives How do I get the posts on my front page (home)? I do not have a page titled Home. The only things showing up (home left) are two widgets I placed there, Text and Recent Posts. Both will move to another location after resolving this issue.
Reading setting is set to latest posts. I do not wish to have a static page titled Home

Is there anyway to reset the template to its original?

P.S. Pages in left sidebar are not complete.

http://drickscafe.com/
Blog url: http://drickscafe.wordpress.com/

Feel free to have a read!

All support documentation for WordPress.com bloggers is at this link http://en.support.wordpress.com The results produced by the searchbox there are from both the support docs and from forum threads.
See here > premium theme support > http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/premium-themes/#premium-theme-support

Read-access to the premium themes forum is now open to all users so you can search to see if your question has been previously asked and answered there. The premium theme forums are at http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/ with separate sections for each theme.

If you are not successful when searching then there is a link for the specific Premium Theme support forum for your theme under Appearance -> Themes in your blog’s Dashboard, but do note that the premium theme must be active and you must be signed in as the user who purchased it in order to see it and post to it.

I so frustrated. Wish I had stayed with Network Solutions. They actually answer their phone.

Help is much appreciated!!!
D.

Here is an example to give you an idea of how you might use it in the Magazine theme:

#content .entry-content {
	columns: 3;
	-webkit-columns: 3;
	-moz-columns: 3;
}
#content .entry-content img {
	max-width: 90%;
}

Here is browser compatibility information about the columns property:
http://caniuse.com/#search=columns

.navlink {
    font-size: 120%;
}

It does require an upgrade to save custom CSS like that, and you can preview any time before purchasing.