I have trouble with making correct smoke

Hi, I use Blender Internal. I found more than a dozen tutorials on the Internet regarding making smoke, some very good. However, none of them answer or correctly explain something I am very much in need of.

I would like to use Blender Internal and I would like to make puffy white cloud like smoke. I am creating a non realistic environment and I have a lot of need for this. For steam, or white chimney smoke and etc.

I learned to use the quick effects, but I would like to know how I can do this from scratch.

Also, so far my smoke always turned out dirty gray. I use flat backgrounds for sky. For example I use a simple light blue background with a single sun lamp for an outdoor scene. You might guess, I have simple objects also (very true).

So I need this for a cartoon like environment and I can’t figure this out.

Thank you.