Hi Keith,
Allthough using views will give you a lot more possibilities, it has also a learning curve. Activating views will also make your site heavier and slower.
So I would like to point out that what you want is also possible without views. If your site is a blog site and you only want a blog content type and one listing of blog items on /blog you could also do it without view following the steps below.
- Go to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types) and add your blog content type. Edit each content type and remove in publishing options the "promote to front page" setting, add it for blog.
- Go to configuration > site information (admin/config/system/site-information) and set the default front page to whatever other fixed page you like