A good day to begin everything!

So I guess today's the day of just jumping in and getting stuff done. I opened up Publisher on my computer and started laying out a page for the book i want to write just to see how hard it would be. I think its more intimidating than hard but there are a lot of questions that I have bobbing around in this confused brain of mine. Like how do they get those nice pretty layouts in the cookbooks I have seen and do i need to keep all my layouts inside that little blue box of a line, around the page (in Publisher);AND if i ever do this thing and write this book, what then, how do you take something from Publisher and get it actually Published? Am I going about this all wrong, have i had too many cups of coffee? Probably yes to all, but if anyone out there in that big space of motion and words and bloggs (that don't understand yet) knows more than me, pass it this way.