First time user needs help!

Yes, that's exactly what the basic functionality is intended to do.

The program isn't overly difficult to use once you get to know it. Unfortunately, IMO, the user interface in the present version, TI2011, isn't the best in making it easy to follow for new users. Like every program, once you understand it, it is the devil you know.

For your question:
Install the program.

Create the bootable restore CD

Make an image of your whole drive or individual partitions. Imaging works on partitions as the smallest unit.
The recommended storage device for your backup archive is a USB drive since it is fast and can be taken off-line. If you have a second internal HD you can place the archive there if you wish but it isn't quite as secure since it is still with the PC - think lighning strike or theft.
TI will write the archive to DVDs and the set can be made bootable but once the archive spans more than a couple you can spend a lot of time swapping DVDs since the program doesn't restore one complete DVD and then the next, etc.

To restore to a new drive or overwrite a partition on your existing drive:
Boot up the rescue CD you made.
Select the archive you wish to restore
Proceed.

If you wish to overwrite your existing drive, it is important that you first confirm that TI will do a restore on your machine. The reason for this is that the rescue CD is Linux and sometimes the driver's aren't a good fit for your hardware.

Doing a restore to a spare hard-drive is the absolute best way to test it. TI first deletes the existing partition before it does the restore and if it can't restore for any reason you will be left with unallocated space. For this reason you don't want to test it on your current operating HD!
A second way of testing which isn't as good as using a spare HD is to create the archive with the TI rescue CD. Then validate the archive using the CD as well. This shows that TI can access your hardware and a successful validation shows that TI can read the archive into RAM and successfully recreate all the numerous checksums included in the archive.

TI has various backup options such as splitting the archive into smaller sections, incremental and differential backups, encryption, automatic validation, etc.

A TI user, GroverH, has written some guides which are available under the Useful Links on the left of your screen. TI also has a user guide which may seem a bit overwhelming at first but contains a lot of good info.