To get started you could use a free hosting even though i would avoid them because of ads , reliability etc.., but its a good way to test the grounds.
Here is the best FreeHost i could find for you :)
MyFreehosting:
- 250 MB of Disk Space, 100 GB Bandwidth
- Host your own domain (http://www.yourdomain.com)
- cPanel Powered Hosting (you will love it)
- Over 500 website templates ready to download
- Free POP3 Email Box with Webmail access
- FTP and Web based File Manager
- PHP, MySQL, Perl, CGI, Ruby.
And more: Image Magick, Streaming Video, Spam Protection, Redirect URL, Fantastico Autoinstaller, Website Builder, FTP Support, Web File Manager, Calendar Functions, Curl, libcurl functions, Exif Extension (able to work with image meta data), FTP Library, GD Library (and manipulate images), Iconv Library (character set conversion facility), Magic Quotes, safe_mode OFF, PHP mail() and Sendmail, IonCube Loader, Zend Optimizer, fopen() and PHP sockets and many more ;)...
http://myfreehosting.tk
For a blog you could use blogger http://www.blogger.com/
or
Wordpress http://wordpress.org/
Good luck
:)