if i were to use the free theme, would i lose the portfolio theme completely and have to re-purchase it if the free theme didn't work out for me?

If a Premium theme doesn’t work out we offer a full refund up to 30 days from your purchase. To cancel your purchase and obtain a refund, please use the Cancel button on the Store -> My Upgrades page. You can always switch to any other Premium theme or one of our other fantastic free themes. http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/premium-themes/

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. http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/forum/portfolio

You also have a premium themes link at Appearance > Themes you can use to post to the premium theme support forum.

textarea, select, input[type="date"], input[type="datetime"], input[type="datetime-local"], input[type="email"], input[type="month"], input[type="number"], input[type="password"], input[type="search"], input[type="tel"], input[type="text"], input[type="time"], input[type="url"], input[type="week"] {
border: 1px solid #000;
}

The #000 is your color (black), if you need a different color, you can find the hex code for it here: http://www.color-hex.com/
(usually, it's six characters, like #000000, but #000 is a shortcut in this case).

Were you able to resolve this? The logo is directing me back to your homepage as I'd expect.

Cheers!

is there any way of getting it back to clicking on the logo for the homepage instead of having a 'home' listed in my custom menu as i somehow managed to do before??

any help is much appreciated
katie

A second attempt:
.contact-form input[type='text'], .contact-form input[type='email'] { background: black; color: white; }

Do you mean the input fields (the boxes visitors type in for their name, email) on http://9thartwave.com/contact/?

If so, you can add this CSS:
.contact-form input[type='text'], .contact-form input[type='email'] {<br /> background: black;<br /> color: white;<br /> }

This would make the input boxes black while the text inside the boxes white.

Is that what you're wanting?

input[type="text"] { background: black; color: white; }

<br /> input[type="text"] {<br /> background: black;<br /> color: white;<br /> }<br />

Read-access to the premium themes forum is now open to all users so you can search there. The premium theme forums are at http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/ with separate sections for each theme. http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/forum/minimum

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. http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/forum/portfolio

footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li:first-child {
  margin-left: 0;
}
footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li.twitter a {
  background-position: 0;
}
footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li.facebook a {
  background-position: -17px;
}
footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li.google a {
  background-position: -34px;
}
footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li.flickr a {
  background-position: -51px;
}
footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li.rss a {
  background-position: -68px;
}

Note that this is the unchanged CSS from the theme. To make it work with a new image, you would need to upload the adjusted image and then determine what "background-position" values to used based on the new image.

If you'd like to get additional design consulting help, you may want to try hiring a designer to make some of the more involved updates:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/customize-my-site/request-theme-customization/

moreover, how can I add fb or twitter buttons on the top or bottom of the pages, and not in the sidebar? without any likes etc, just the fb button to connect my blog with my fb page

There is not a way to do that built into the theme options, so one way to do it would be to simply add it manually using HTML to each page.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/editors/#text-editor

Hello, how can I color a facebook button on the bottom, next to the RSS one.

The buttons in the footer of the Portfolio theme are setup using what is called a CSS sprite. It uses an image to with all of the buttons together and then moves a window to show only the correct image for each link in the HTML.

Here is the image used by the theme:
http://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/portfolio/images/social-icons.svg

It's called like this in the theme CSS:

footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li a {
  background: url(http://s2.wp.com/wp-content/themes/premium/portfolio/images/social-icons.svg) no-repeat;
  display: inline-block;
  opacity: .25;
  height: 16px;
  width: 16px;
  -webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease;
  -moz-transition: all 0.2s ease;
  transition: all 0.2s ease;
}
footer[role="contentinfo"] nav.social ul li a:hover {
  opacity: 1;
}

If you upload a new image with a different color and adjust the url() value in that CSS block and add it back to your Appearance → Custom Design → CSS editor, you can change the color of the buttons.

If you would like to learn more about CSS sprites, start here:
http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

moreover, how can I add fb or twitter buttons on the top or bottom of the pages, and not in the sidebar? without any likes etc, just the fb button to connect my blog with my fb page

thanks

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. http://premium-themes.forums.wordpress.com/forum/portfolio

If you are not successful when searching 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.