Point in the right direction?

I've been playing around in MS-DOS making some small programs that are basically calculators and the like. I am really looking to make a simple program but something that looks like a regular program you would see on a windows pc, instead of black and white with stale text. I know it is complex and am not asking you to tell me how to do it but I don't really know what to look for. I would like to keep the automation down to a minimum. I mean if the whole thing is a template from a program and all I have to do is drag a few buttons around the place and copy some code then I'm not going to bother. I'd really like to learn the inner workings of how to create my own program from complete scratch everything from windows detecting the code to compiling the graphics. Before you ask I am not taking it seriously it is just something I am interested in and would like to have a look at I mean if it would take me a year to finish by myself then I won't start. Any help at all would be great.