I know I can put one div inside another and have 2 backgrounds that way but the content inside either div won't extend both backgrounds. Anyone know a way around this?

When we get to CSS3, quite easily. But in the meantime a bit of playing with relative and absolute positioning can get you Multiple Backgrounds

Thanks for the reply, i'm also eagerly awaiting CSS3. Thanks for the cool link but I think i have that much so far. I neglected to mention that my main problem is that I can't get the backgrounds to extend with the content. I guess it isn't possible but i wanted to avoid a fixed height.

thanks again for the help

figured it out, I put the 2 divs inside a third one that placed it in the right position, thanks again!

Or you could set the z-index to compensate layering.

tried that too and it works fine as long as you have a fixed width and height but it wasn't working for a liquid layout