Hi Rob, the CSS container for the blog right hand pane is blognavright. You can use CSS to change the colors in this container, and you can even make the whole thing appear on the left side (which would place the RSS icon directly under the blog title) like this:
.blognavright {
float: left;
}
I also seem to vaguely remember a post about a user.config key that would change the layout of the blog. Unfortunately I can't find it now, but if you spend some time searching the forums for posts about the blog module you may be able to find it.
Hope that helps,
Jamie