Hi Kim,
The more you look through your telescope the more you will see! Over time your eye and brain will learn how to see faint things and details. For instance try the 'averted vision' trick: when looking at a faint object like a nebula or galaxy, don't look directly at the thing, rather to the side of the field of view and you should see much more detail jump out - it's got to do with the way your retina is set up to see in low light.
Also get a good atlas. Book form and computer form. Stellarium is a free, superbly designed planetarium - style atlas that allows you to whizz around the sky and see what's up etc in a very realistic manner - download it here:
http://www.stellarium.org/
And for easy thrills, find the milky way, which is pretty much up at the moment, put in your widest field eyepiece (usually the one with the largest mm on the side, say 15 or 25 or 40mm), and meander along taking in the pretty lights!!!
Richard