Hosting A Blogger.com Blog

I currently have a blog hosted on blogger.com linked to a custom domain (www.tylergrubb.com) and am weighing the benefits of hosting my own site to add some subdomains where I can host new html pages. Can I transfer my current domain to host gator and host the new html pages I want as subdomains while maintaining the full user interface and external links to the blog portion of my domain? Is transferring my blog to Wordpress an easier route to accomplish this? And if so, how can I keep my theme/background/widgets without paying Wordpress to customize my theme?

Any advice helps a ton.
Thanks!