There's something wrong with this layout and I don't quite know what else to add to make it look more together. Is anyone willing to add stuff to this layout? I'm kinda going in circles with this one. You can go crazy and add your own designs just as long as it would look clean.

This is for those with spare time only. I'm not trying to pass my dilemma to anyone.

How about (and before you take this the wrong way, I have never designed a website before) letting the cartoon character's right hand to show? I like the way her head and left hand is extended to the background. And instead of running the menu navigation up and down (vertically), why don't you use the blank bar that is available, right under cartoon characters neck/body, going horizontally? Perhaps you can make it so that it's a drop down submenu as well. Then the body of the page can be either fit to width or run it centered with cell padding on each side.

Cool beans!

Yeah, you could have that hand sticking out from the overall frame of the site as it does at the top. Also, I'd reduce the size of the nav buttons - there's a lot of dead space after the text. What is the name of the site? I always like to play around with words & fonts so it's hard to suggest anything without knowing the name. If the word ended in a letter with a descender (ie g, p, q etc.), it'd be good to have that letter dropping down below the border of your header to add balance to the bits sticking out the top at the left.

I'm not sure how you will position the actual tables if you have parts of the banner sticking out. Does this mean you'll have a large white space outside the site space?

Little Lulu is predominantly red and black/brown. It would be much easier to blend with a similar colour scheme. Try a different font, as I think it's supposed to be a bit more "fun", if not, just make sure you try not to have it pixellated as pixellated text looks really bad.

Otherwise, just continue the design in the main area next to the menu - have your cell, with a green gradient bar on the top saying "News" or whatever it's about, to match with the rest of the site. On the left, if you could have pictures on the buttons it might flesh them out a bit, and if you add a hit counter you shouldn't have spare space on the bottom left. I think having like Tubby's face on some of the buttons would be cool

It should still be a fairly clean design like that...

If you don't use tables and use the correct CSS, it shouldn't be a problem.

yeah use the div tags with the menu then you can line it up perfectl, but when you use a transparent background it won't ruin the tables just have to use the div tags to line it up.

aww!! the image looks cute! but it looks kinda emply lookin, don't you think? maybe you should add more stuff to the top banner like textures or text, brushes, etc. especailly because the navigation bar is kinda small, it makes the layout look really empty @_@

No offense but the layout looks too bland. You need too add a bit more brushes or text onto it so it looks full..

and yeah that is prety much it

The layout looks pretty..plain but its okay ;:)