Hi Blunda
I'm pretty new to this as well so I'll be interested to see what others have to say about this, however having looked at your web page I think I can help. I too am working on a site that uses a simple single level menu design (which I think you are too), meaning there are no sub-menus. I also wanted to use some nice looking buttons, instead of the standard DNN menus.
Rather than using an image as the background with the NAV bar over the top, I decided to not use the NAV bar at all. Therefore on every page I un-ticked the option to "Include In Menu". I also edited the default.htm and moved the NAV bar right to the bottom of my page, so that whenever I log in the Host and Admin modules now appear down at the bottom left of the page.
I then created a whole bunch of "buttons" (text on the buttons included) and inserted them into my Top pane (wasn't quite that simple ... more on that in a mo), and told this pane to appear on every page, meaning within the advanced settings for the Top pane I ticked the option to show the Module on Every Page.
Just about to contradict myself ... in my Top pane I actually inserted a whole bunch of transparent images, each one with an ID and a link reference to the page I want to send my user to, and via the skin.css file I tell the page what button image to use. The end result isI have buttons (images that act like buttons) that are totally under my control.
As first stated, not sure if this is the best way to go about it but it seems to work for me, so maybe wait for other suggestions or if interested in more info I can provide a further example of exactly what code I use to insert the blank buttons in the Top pane, plus the exact CSS syntax I use to swap the images out.