Option one sounds preferable. This plug-in is brilliant on the theme I have that has a built-in side bar, so just replicating that format would be wonderful.
I've searched the wordpress codex to find "how to add sidebar" links, but it assumes that the person reading the proposed code knows where to actually insert the code. (I can make minor code/template changes, but only to things like color, margin, padding, etc.)
Any thoughts you may have would be very helpful.
Thank you again! - Anna