How To?: ‘Latest Post’ followed by excerpts as homepage solution?

Is there a way to make the homepage (home.php or whatever) display the latest post, followed by X excerpts? The site is chadsreviews.com, and it gets a new post everyday, and I am trying to find a compromise so that I can have the first page people come to contain the ‘Review of the day’ graphic, followed by that days post, but also allow a regular chronological list of posts to be available as well.
For now, I have created a home.php that displays the latest post, and added a link after the loop that links to that months archives (which will work well enough until the end of the month, where I’ll have to change the link to the next month).
I would be totally content if there was a way to go to an archive of all posts. Is this possible via some sort of link to /?cat=”all” or something ???
Thanks for any help!
-Ryan