Primary Links as graphical buttons

Hi everybody,

I'm new to drupal and have been very impressed so far w/ how easy it's been to 'drupalize' my website. The only thing I have left to do is convert my main nav bar. On my old, non-drupal site, I had my main links as graphical buttons in the left sidebar.

As of right now, I've got those same links in the left sidebar of my drupal site, but they are plain boring text. I've tried Nick Lewis's css id tutorial, but while my css and xhtml is intermidiate, I'm just getting aquainted with PHP... so I'm afraid my foundational knowledge isn't quite up to par.

my website is a simple 4 page static for a client, and I hope to use drupal to expand functionality for specific users in the future. Right now, however, I just want the 'look and feel' to be the same for the general public users who don't log in... so I've got the original nav bar set up as the primary links (specifically id="block-menu-2" in the sidebar) and those are the only links I need to convert.

anyone have any additional clues or pointers? Thanks a lot!