Blogger help!

I need help from my fellow bloggers out there. I am desperately wanting to change the look of my blog. But I have a few questions:
-suggestions on where I can look for new templates?
-how do I upload a new template without losing all of the settings I already have on my current template (I have tried this once before, but realized that by changing to the new layout I had found, I lost everything but the text from my posts)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and if anyone wants to take my kids so that I actually have time to do this, that would be appreciated too ;)