Well, you can use categories to create a virtual blog.
Take a look at this page on my personal blog, which is a category archive. It shows excerpts, but by going to Graphene Options >> Display >> Excerpts Display Options and ticking the box marked “Show full content in archive pages” it will display the full posts.
You can always provide a link to that particular category archive and it will act like a “blog within a blog.”
Is this close to what you are looking for?
Ken