Newbie in regards to the world of website hosting and purchasing domain names so any help is appreaciated.  I am wanting to purchase a .com and maybe a .co.nz domain name (have checked on domainz and they are free) but dont really now how the best way to approach it is. 

Initially I just want a place holder with the idea to bring a website up and move some livejournal blogs to it that my wife has written.  Once I have the web page up and running and hosted somewhere I then have to work out how to extract the blog entries for publishing on the new site.

Any help is appreaciated including software that could be used to create a failry simple webpage to start with and then ramp it up.  I am an ideas guy with good creative thinking but dont have the nouce to do it

So in bullet points...
1.  Where is the best place to purchase the domain names and waht is a resonable cost
2.  Waht is a good hosting company that can preferably do 1 as well.
3.  What is good software for the novice with room to move as confidence grows.

Cheers