hi all
I need LOTS of help. I'm brand new to building an online store and brand new to Zen Cart.
In fact I'm new to building websites in general.

I am finishing up on a site for my wife and need to add some product options and a shopping cart.
A already have all the products up on the site, with descriptions and pricing but just need to be able to get them to be selected and added to a fairly simply shopping cart.
There are some options I want the buyers to be able to have, such as on many of the products they can add a Text Personalization so i need a way to add that option in within the ordering process so they can choose that option if they wish on the product it's available for, input the text they want, and have the characters automatically counted and added in on the total sale (cost is per character of text).
I also need the customer to be able to able to have a place so they can upload a photo image to my wife to be added to the product.
I don't need many shipping options - all items will have a single, set, standard shipping price per item so no need to have any shiiping calculators or anything like that. i just need to be able to add the set shipping price per item onto the items list to be added in for the total sale.

That's about it.

It doesn't seem like it should be TOO complicated but I'm looking around the store admin panel and it's like reading latin to me - not sure where to even start!
Do I really need to relist all the items all over again in a store catalog when they are already on the site now?.

Here is a link to the site I just built so you can see what I mean.
http://www.lbkeepsakes.com/
if you look at the products (under PhotoThrow Styles) you will see every item listed and the price. The 'Buy Now" buttons are just images I put in for placement during the page layouts and they will be replaced with the real things when I figure out how to do everything.

Any help you all can offer me would be GREATLY appreciated!!
I'm utterly and completely lost here

Barry