First off the Blender community is the best online community I’ve come across, though I’ve only been here a little while.
Anyway, I finally finished my first “real” render, based on BlenderCookie tutorial (though I changed some settings). Not nearly as polished as some of the great art I’ve seen here, but it’ll do. I plan on hanging it on my son’s wall.
Thanks for all the help everyone, thanks to my son for inspiration and to the Academy…er, Blender Foundation 
Only one critique i have, make the balloons that are in the background a different color. They look too…gray. Nice job for a first render though. Also,turn up the reflectivity on the balloon a little,something like .2 should do, and maybe turn on environment lighting as well (change the setting to sky texture instead of the default.
Well, I purposely chose a grayish-red to contrast with the bright red balloon which had “broken free” from the others. There’s a big message here in this piece, don’t ya know 
I tried the reflectivity just now, but that seemed to glossy and glass-like for a material and I tried to match most balloons I’ve seen, which are pretty flat and opaque. Jonathan Williamson’s tutorial called for more transparency, but I turned that off pretty much.
Environment lighting kind of helped though. Thanks for the tip!