finally figured it out!

 it's been driving me crazy that i could not get rid of that pesky border/shadow around our pictures so our signatures would look like they were part of the page. i finally searched it on blogger instead of google and at long last, a forum gave me the solution! here's what you have to do in case you feel plagued by the shadows like i was....

Go to Layout>Edit HTML and look for this code:
.post-body img, .post-body .tr-caption-container, .Profile img, .Image img,
.BlogList .item-thumbnail img {
padding: 2px;
background: #ffffff;
border: 1px solid #ffffff;
-moz-box-shadow: 1px 1px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1);
-webkit-box-shadow: 1px 1px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1);
box-shadow: 1px 1px 5px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1);
}

delete the backgroud, border and shadow codes, like this:
.post-body img, .post-body .tr-caption-container, .Profile img, .Image img,
.BlogList .item-thumbnail img {
padding: 2px;
}

 easy peasy! this has definitely been the most exciting lunch break i've had in a while! 

thank you greenlava, whoever you are, for answering questions on forums!