Rippa Rita, it'd just be handy to make all tags lower-case and remove <font> tags, they're redundant if your going to use CSS.
From a color standpoint, the red doesnt harmonize with gold and your black makes the scheme look a bit murky; try using a very dark shade of your gold instead.
I also think your main content should be an inverse color scheme of your header graphic; dark gold trim, grey gradient panel fills and a light, muted gold background to content area with dark gold font color.
Layout is good m8, nice way to go for a non-designer.
If ya wanna easy way to make a guarenteed color scheme, go for monocolor, choose 5 varying tones of the same hue from darkest to lightest and stick with em. Reduce the saturation for large areas of flat color.
Linear Mode
