Go into your "User Options" and look at the bottom of the screen. Find the "Miscellaneous Options" and in that area there is a selection of "Message Editor Interface". Set your message interface to "Enhanced Interface - WYSIWYG".
Now when you got to post you'll have a box of commonly used smilies to the right of the body of your message and there will be an option labled "more" below that will launch a separate window with all of the smilies available. Click on them from that window and they'll be instantly inserted into your text wherever you left your cursor.
That fancy smilie you mentioned earlier was probably posted by Kayden and he didn't get it here.