I only know a few things about Puja from what Sai Baba has shared with us, not from mainstream Hinduism
What does Sai Baba say on it?
That said, I'm not sure this will be helpful, but below is the Durga Puja I attended in 2017 with the Vedanta Society of Cleveland. (I even have a "cameo" [I have no lines
] in the last video; see if you can spot me.)
With your fashion sense, you've got to be the one in the beautiful pink dress.
My sampradaya is big on puja.
I do daily Saiva Atmartha (personal) puja. While travelling it's done mentally, as it's hard to bring all the necessary stuff. My sampradaya has a guidebook, and an oral recitation by a clear priest for the enunciation of Sanskrit. I've had questions answered about it occasionally by the monks. For example, last question I asked was with regard to travel. During the sankalpa, if you're visualising the home shrine, and it comes to the part of saying the location, do you use your home shrine, or the place where you physically are. (The answer was to use where you currently are.)
My puja takes about half an hour, as there are several steps, including intro, abhishekam, offering of naivedya, astottaram, final aarti, and concluding.
For special occasions, we use the same basic forma, but the chants change slightly. For Guru Purnima, as an example, the abhishekham is done to the Tiruvadi, and the astottaram is th 108 names of the Guru.
As for advice, I'd say find a format, and expand on that, using your heart.
I'd like to get back into the habit of daily personal puja. It was something I did when Ares was a toddler, and he actually sat for it(I guess it wasn't personal puja, then, but puja for two). Prasad was one of his first words; we usually offered oranges, flowers from outside, milk/and or yogurt. It was simple and probably took less than ten minutes; it was using the format from the Hindu-Blog website.
I do puja using the same format now on Ekadashi, but usually without Ares, as he just plays with stuff in the puja room and is a general distraction. My husband keeps Pradosh, and he usually does abishikam.
Normally puja would mean reciting 'ashtottara' (108 names; Google: Ashtottara for any said deity and you will find it) and offering flower petals for each name when recited.
Some people do 'abhishekham' or offering of different forms of liquids like milk, curd, honey, jaggery water, ghee, followed by any of: sugar, flower petals, fruit salad, pomegranite seeds, coconut water, etc. People typically complete this with ashtottara and conclude with naivedya. This is what typically constitutes a puja, in general terms.
During Navaratri,more than above said format of puja, recitation of Durga Shaptasati is most famous. Or you can also play it and listen to it, in front of Durga shrine.
In South India, we keep 'Kolu' and recite Durga Shaptasati and/or Lakshmi-Narayana Hridayam before the god idols at the kolu.
I've thought about keeping Kolu this year; its something we've talked about but not done. Our plan was to display some appropriately dressed dolls in our windowed in porch, though I'm not sure if our porch will be suitable this year(we have so much home construction going on, I don't even know what's going on most days).
Some puja terms:
Shodasobachara: 16 step puja ritual.
*It is not necessary to do 16 steps, normally a short puja means doing abhishekam with 5 substances and then reciting ashtottara with flower offerings followed by naivedya.
I've got a book with the 16 step puja in it, but it doesn't really tell one what to say when offering an item. Can anything be said, or can it be done silently?
I find what I've read of the Panchayatana puja to be interesting as well.
Its been nice prepping the shrines for Navratri. Its giving me something to look forward to. I am really not sure why, being as we have a puja room that we use frequently, but we always end up using our living room shrines for Navratri. We have a 'Devi wall' in the living room; my husband had prayed to Lakshmi to find us a good home, and she did. We found a house with more than enough room, and we're able to set up two different meditation/puja areas and at a price about 20,000 dollars less than we were budgeting for(essentially, this took us out of being poor as well). He did, however, tell her if she did this, he'd build her a shrine right in the living room, and he did. Though its split into three and takes up a whole wall; the center part Lakshmi's, and then with a display for Durga and one for Saraswati on both sides.
