moving text while keeping background-image in CSS

Question

hello, I have a 'main_menu' div which contains a background-image that is repeating on the y-axis. Above this div I have another div which is used for a header. The problem is that the header div has an image which is about 75px in height. I would like to start the text in main_div about 50 px higher from where main_div's background-image actually starts.

I was thinking of something like:

position:absolute; top:-50px;

This doesn't really work. The question is how do I move the text up, while keeping the background-image at the normal spot.

Thanks

{EDIT}

Here's the CSS

.menu_main
{
background-image:url('../menu_main.jpg');
background-repeat:repeat-y;
width:173px;
padding:5px; 

}
.menu_header
{
background-image:url('../menu_header.jpg');
text-align:center;
width:173px;
height:65px;
padding:5px; 
}

This is the html

<div class="menu_header">Some Header</div>
<div class="menu_main">
 <ul>
  <li>Educational Objective</li>
  <li>Projects</li>
  <li>Class Preparation</li>
  <li>Testimonials</li>
 </ul>
</div>

So as you can see the header is pretty tall. So I'd like to start the text in the menu_main div about 50px higher up

Answer 1

You could move it like you were doing with absolute positioning and move the background down like so:

background:url(someimage.png) repeat-y left 50px;

this will move your bg image so it starts 50px down.

I might be able to help more if you provide a screenshot or more code or a live example...

Answer 2

You could style your UL specifically:

.nav
{
  position: relative;
  top: -50px;
}

and

<ul class="nav">
...

Or perhaps put the UL in another DIV class="nav".

Answer 3

Use a negative top margin.

.menu_main ul {margin-top:-50px;}