Where should I start a blog?

I want to make a blog about my selective breeding of wild guppies. I want to include pictures and journal-ish entries. I want to be able to categorize posts by month posted, along with content-tagging. I want it to look nice, with a banner and also with a horizontal navigation bar up top for major tagging categories.

Also oh god am I web-design-dumb. Something easy and intuitive, or with a good guide, is also preferred. I would rather not use Tumblr. In addition, it would have to be free, perhaps with aquarium-specific ads (though preferably no ads).

So, what are some good blog hosts?

I use wordpress.com. I've been using it for about 6 months and have been charged zero dollars. I've also never seen an advertisement on my page. Easy to use, stats are tracked constantly and you can buy the domain if you want for like 18 dollars. Try it out.

I prefer Blogger.com for some reason. The main reason is that Wordpress is very strict with affliate links.
You may have problems embedding videos from certain providers (not the mainstram ones).