Custom Home Page Problems

[TBM]

Greetings. This issue I'm having I mentioned in my last topic but recently discovered that it was unrelated to the first issue I was having. I'm trying to build a custom homepage for version 4.0 of this theme (I was able to achieve what I wanted in version 2.0 of the lifestyle theme but have been having a few issues when trying to recreate it this time around. I'm trying to turn the homepage into a blog with the featured content galley at the top of the page (same placement as in demo of the church theme). Also, I want the blog posts to be separated showing the background in between them. Here is an example of what I want the posts to look like with the spaces in between them and a header image with each posts - http://xbox360.gameserenity.com/

I read in these forums about turning the home page into a blog by deleting the home.php file and renaming the page_blog.php to home. I have done that and added a few small changes to the original code. For some reason after these changes are made little white boxes are displayed on the right side of the blog content and a few at the bottom and one under the footer when viewed in IE. I have no idea what is causing this affect to happen.

Any help or advice on fixing these issues is greatly appreciated. I have spent many many hours messing with the code trying to fix these issues and haven't found a proper way to do so. The site these issues are on is http://playstation3.gameserenity.com/.

The code that is currently being displayed for the home.php is

<?php
/*
Template Name: Blog
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="content">

	<div id="contentleft">
	
		<div class="postarea">
				
			<?php $page = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; query_posts("cat=".get_theme_mod('blog_cat')."&showposts=".get_theme_mod('blog_cat_num')."&paged=$page"); while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>
            
			<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
				
			<div class="date">
			
				<div class="dateleft">
					

<span class="time">Posted on <?php the_time('M jS Y') ?> by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?> <?php edit_post_link('(Edit)', '', ''); ?></p>
				</div>

				<div class="dateright">
					

<span class="icomment"><?php comments_number(__('Leave a Comment', 'studiopress'), __('1 Comment', 'studiopress'), __('% Comments', 'studiopress')); ?></span></p> 
				</div>
				
			</div>
				
			<?php the_content(__('[Read the rest of this entry]', 'studiopress'));?><div class="clear"></div>
				
			<div class="postmeta2">
				

Filled in <?php the_category(', ') ?></p>
							
                        </div>

			<?php endwhile; ?>
			
			

<?php if(function_exists('wp_pagenavi')) { wp_pagenavi(); } ?></p>
		
		</div>
		
	</div>
	
<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH."/sidebar.php");?>
		
</div>

<?php // The main column ends  ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

I haven't changed the post much CSS code yet as far as I remember so it is the same as it is in the demo (only changed color of links, post meta 2, other tweeks that don't affect around the post area.