Pre-Interview Code Test Please Help!

Hello Everyone, I am a very new developer but I have secured an interview for a position as a Junior Web Developer with a great company that can teach me a lot. They sent me this code test, and I am having trouble with the date font and the text around the cat image.

If you have any advice on how to make my mark up more semantic and/or add html 5/css 3 tags that would be awesome! Be honest! I'm so excited to start this journey!

• The reference width of the page is 960px, but we'd like a responsive design on a flexible grid.

• You should only need one image, located here: http://bit.ly/zzsCXU.  Do not resize it with an image-editing tool.  It should scale with the page, but be no wider than 150px when the page is 960px wide.

• The body text is not important, and you can generate more of it here: http://lipsum.com/? * Do note that there are a couple of inline style changes in the main body text.

• Use HTML5 and CSS3 to as great an extent as you can, but remember that the page should display in some form on IE 7.

• Do not assume that the text in the HTML will have the correct capitalization to match the style on the image.

• Strongly favor progressive enhancement and semantic markup.

• In the Search box on the top right, make the word "Search" disappear when the user focuses on the input in as many browsers as you can.

• The font families are Verdana and Arial.  The colors are #808000, #000080, #fefeee, #7070f0, and the gradient under the date goes from #a6a6a6 to #808000.  The corners have a radius of 4px.  The shadows extend for 4px with a 2px blur.

• Do your best and have fun!

http://cdpn.io/pAwxt