A Simple layout for WordPress Blog Posts. This would show a Featured image, Title and a custom Excerpt in a clickable div.

The markup:

The css:

.blog-post {
	width: 750px;
	float: left;
	position: relative;
	margin-bottom: 40px;
}
.blog-post a {
	display: block;
	padding: 10px;
	overflow: hidden;
	border: 5px solid #EDEDED;
}
.blog-post a:hover {
	background-color: #FFC;
	border: 5px solid #CCC;
	
}
.featured-image {
	width: 300px;
	height: 200px;
	float: left;
	position: relative;
}
.featured-content {
	width: 410px;
	float: left;
	position: relative;
	margin-left: 10px;
	line-height: 22px;
}

To get the custom Excerpt going, you’re going to have to add this function to your theme’s fucntions.php file.

// Limit the excerpt without truncating the last word.
function get_excerpt($count){
  $permalink = get_permalink($post->ID);
  $excerpt = get_the_content();
  $excerpt = strip_tags($excerpt);
  $excerpt = substr($excerpt, 0, $count);
  $excerpt = $excerpt.'... read more';
  return $excerpt;
}