I am redesigning my front end and I want to put my key words on it so they are attractive. Does anyone know, do keywords used as text anchors in a menu bar count as key words on the page they reside on. ie) say I have an article and I use a keyword to link to that article from the home page, does the keyword count toward the home page?

As long as it's on the page it will count as a keyword on the page. It will probably have more benefit to the article page as keywords in the anchor text of a link usually have a lot of benefit to the linked page. They'll also benefit the page with the link on it.

What you're doing is the right approach.

Just design the site for humans and they should be good for the SE as well.

Yep shabbirbhimani is right. Always develop pages for human beings first. In the end it makes no difference how much traffic you may get if the people coming to your site don't like it they'll just leave.

But using your keywords in anchor text is good and will benefit both pages for that keyword phrase.