Ok, I'm glad he at least got an honorable mention!
So it might be possible to do part of what you want. I don't think you can have a separate header image unless your theme supports that feature (and even then, it's random).
You CAN add category tags to your custom menu, described here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/#adding-category-pages
Doing this means you'd click on your menu item for "Pic of the day" and get taken to every post that's categorized that way. You've basically done the same thing by customizing the URL, but you may want to try it this way.
You can show the full post instead of a summary by making edits to this page:
https://riverwayranchcamp.wordpress.com/wp-admin/options-reading.php
Be warned: this applies to the full site.
So to not show your timeline on the homepage, you'll want to make your homepage static (done!) and then set your posts page as something else. Your sticky posts will be on the homepage, and your new posts will go into another page that you'll have to designate.
So I know I'm not solving all the things you want done here, but does this help?