I think it's great that you're taking this on, Dawn! I'm a very visual, example-based learner and my recommendations below reflect that; these are the tools that worked best for me when I was first learning and I often go back to reference them.
My favorite online tutorial and reference site was
HTML Goodies. They provide simple explanations with clear examples that are generally based around asking "so you want to do _____?" and then showing you how to do that. ("So you want to align text, huh?", etc.)
My favorite books were the
Visual Quickstart series written by Peachpit Press. They also format themselves in a practical "how do you make ___?" sort of way and they've got great visuals right inside the book so you can compare whether your own work is matching up. The book that you'd want has "HTML, XHTML, and CSS" in the title, though I'm not sure which edition they're currently on.
On preview, what Tammi said about Wordpress is spot on. I've done that for a lot of websites, including mine, and it's really a great tool; easy to use and there's a whole community of people who use it and who offer up things that they've made, so you can implement features and templates on your own site that other people have created. But if you really want to learn the code that goes into it, building a site from scratch is a great way to internalize things.
Good luck and keep us posted!