Well, first of all i think that you don''t need direct3D at all to make this job all you need is direct draw...

To create a menu you must draw everything with your hands...
Basically you draw a filled rectangle with the color you want your menu to appear with... then it''s time to add items to your menu....

Adding items to your menu will require you to write your font engine first under direct draw... this is basically done by having an image that contains all the alphabetical characters and bliting from it to the ositions you want to draw it...

you''ll find a useful article here in gamedev,net about creating your font engine.

Concerning the part of alpha-blending you won''t need D3D to implement it by hardware... you can use direct draw instead with the support of MMX or 3DNow! instruction sets... you''ll find also here some articles disribinng this...