After looking at several blog creation tools I eventually chose BlogEngine.NET - it is very powerful and very customizable yet is relatively easy to use and setup.  It has a full-featured administration area and does not require coding almost at all, but let's you change it as you see fit.  There are plenty of extensions and themes available.  My next task is to develop our own custom theme; I will likely make it available to others using BlogEngine once it is completed.  I highly recommend this tool to others!