Paragrams Theme Questions

New to WordPress and I really love the Paragrams theme, but I am having some issues with it. When I post and insert an image, the image isn’t showing up on the home page – only when I click through.

I’m not well versed in coding, so I’d also like a suggestion of a plugin for design features or a GUI interface that would make designing in WP easier. My goal is to make the home page static with 3 columns and 2 rows (same design as the example home page) and have each of the 6 boxes link to a category or another static page.

Thank You!