Finish wordpress theme customisation to what I have in mind

Hi, my name is Tess. I’m a travel blogger & photographer. I have had a theme installed on my website which I need customising. The first person I worked with established the overall framework which now needs perfecting.
Essentially, I need someone to finish what has been started and perfect it until I am happy with the end result and am left with a fully responsive easily customisable website so I can upload content while I travel.

I want to work with someone efficient whom I can trust 100% and who feeds back to me what he / she is working on and exchanges ideas along the way. I have a clear idea of the rough framework but am happy to hear your suggestions and ideas.

I’m looking for someone to put my vision into practice, but also teach me so I can learn.

Ideally I’m looking for someone who has designed travel blogs in the past. Keep in mind I CANNOT provide you with much content in advance as it is a travel blog and the content will grow while I travel. Hence, I need to be shown how to upload my content as opposed to having someone doing it for me. I'm sure to be asking the right person for advice in future - so if we work well together, I will keep coming back to you.

What I have so far:

- Website www.alifefullofserendipity.com (please do not disable the coming soon mode whilst you are working on the website) hosted via bluehost
- Word Press theme Hazel 6 template http://demo.select-themes.com/hazel6/
- rough outline which needs perfecting & made pretty
- custom logo is uploaded

WHAT TO DO

- Please read my brief (which I will send to you) and do the amendments first & perfect what has been done already (should not take too long): we are talking about basic tasks here such as 'move this button to the centre' or 'add...to the top bar' etc. This should not take longer than 1 day.
- Incorporate my branding colours into the website. At the moment I only have the basic template colours installed which work quite well with my colours but I would like the website look like MY website as opposed to a themed template.
- install the updates for my theme if you think it is necessary (and show me how it is done e.g. download the updates from themeforest and upload it via FTP, so I know how to do it in future.
- give me a crash course on how to use Wordpress e.g. how to upload / update / revise content. I have basic knowledge of it and have specific questions about things which I could not figure out myself.
- make the page safe (install something like backup buddy or suggest alternative)
- basic SEO
- Refer to screenshots I'm sending you of how I would like things to look like
- make the website faster / responsive
- install USEFUL plug-ins for a travel blog, such as (& open to suggestions), embed them into the website & show me how to use them (especially newsletters / blogs etc.):

- After the deadline
- Photo dropper
- Grab & save
- smash it (makes pics smaller)
- Geo mashup
- Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
- W3 Total cache (makes page faster)
- WP touch (for mobile phones)
- Sociable
- CommentLuv
- WP-DBManager (backup tool)
- Akismet
- Google Libraries
- Tweetily
- TimeZoneCalculator
- LogMyTrip
- WP WorldTravel
- WP Visited Countries (Map)
- Facebook Page Promoter Lightbox
- Google XML Sitemaps
- TablePress
- Akismet
- Comment Reply Notification
- Contact Form 7
- Digg Digg
- Facebook Social Widgets (& other social media widgets)
- FD Feedburner Plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps
- nRelate
- Photo Dropper
- Ultimate Google Analytics
- WordPress SEO by Yoast (or similar)
- WPTouch Mobile Plugin

My aim is to have a finished website to be published in 1 week which is easily customisable and exactly the way I had it in mind.


URLS to draw inspiration from

http://www.neverendingfootsteps.com/
http://www.legalnomads.com/
http://wanderlusters.com/ or any travel blog / photography blog you come across with.


General information for the website: Travel blog, photography blog, adventure & yoga reviews, fund-raising.