There's been some discussion about free textures...could you explain what I do with a texture once I've downloaded it?

Are you asking where to store them or what to do with them on an image???

Here is a link to one of the homeworks using a texture
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1984

Thanks for pointing the way to the tutorial...I played around quite a bit and see what I can do with them although I get the impression that textures go hand in hand with editing the photo to get an enhanced effect...by the way, when I dragged the texture on top of the photo, the texture was too "large". I resized them to the same approximate size as the photo and then dragged it on. Is that the best way? (can't you tell I'm a newbie? I use PSE3)

Yes, it is best to resize the texture first. Newbies are more than welcome. In case, I forgot on the other post, WELCOME to the forum. Also in one of the newsletters there is another tutorial using textures. I think it was the second one but download all of them. There are some nice tuts in there.