After I remove the background of a photo... then what?

[Lights Out]

O.k. I'm painfully new to graphics editing, so my questions may be very simplistic to most here. I am working on a project for a logo for my after hours business (much more passionate endeavor than just a hobby). On my lunch and breaks at work, I have used a "paint" program to "erase" all of the surrounding elements, leaving only the portion of the image I want to use in my logo. From there, I used GIMP to do some manipulation using a variety of filters available to produce a good foundation image for my logo. (I only have the Xara photo and graphics 9 program on my personal laptop, as the I.T. guy at work has blocked ALL downloads... ugh.) Now I need to copy the image and take it to my laptop at home to begin additional processing. Here is where I get to the unknowns...

I now have an image sitting on a white background. I want to be able to "remove" the white background so the (forgive my lack of technical jargon) "cut-out" image can be imported without a background. Eventually I plan to add text above and below the image in a convex/concave shape, so it somewhat "encircles" the image. (Sorry if my descriptions are vague or confusing.) Finally, I want to "tie" the image and text together into a coherent logo by using a background shape, etc.

Any help on removing the white background would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I dinked around with manipulating text a bit last night with the Xara software. I was able to create text, utilize the 3-D mode and manipulate (rotate, extrude, color) the text. How do I incorporate the image and the text together on the same "clipboard"? (Again, forgive my lack of knowledge/use of correct graphics terminology.) If I am correct, I will have at least 4 components that will need to be combined to create my logo:
1.Concave text above
2. Image
3. Convex text below
4. Background shape to bring all of the elements together

THANKS AGAIN IN ADVANCE!


UPDATE- WOOHOO! I found a youtube video of how to erase a background, which leaves the desired image as an "alpha channel" with a transparent background. Any help with bringing the additional elements together would be greatly appreciated!