This is my first attempt at creating a plugin, so be gentle :P Basically the two problems I have is that the text from the notes file doesn't have a margin between it and the side of the "widget", like so: http://i.imgur.com/LRpRQ.png
The second problem is that the text being displayed from the notes .txt file doesn't get updated right after I save the file, I have to right click and "refresh skin".
You can edit the distance from the left border by changing the "X" value in [NotesText1].
The skin isn't refreshed after you save the file because Rainmeter has no way of detecting this saving action. To make matters worse, you have a UpdateDivider=3600 on that text, which means it's effectively updated every hour.
If you want the skin to notice a change in the notes file faster, you have to decrease that UpdateDivider. Since putting an UpdateDivider on that meter but not on the Quote plugin measure is kind of useless, you might want to remove that line completely. This will result in changes to the notes file being applied once per update cycle (which is 1 second in your case).
Thanks very much, both of your solutions worked a charm. Here's the finished product if anyone wants it (although it doesn't differ much from the original):
