I know what you mean.
In terms of making it clickable, you can make the whole element clickable.
It was just a question of creating the padding in the first instance. If it helps, heres the css I did for the one in the other thread which may help you to deconstruct/reconstruct:
ul#cssmw > li > a, ul#cssmw > li > a:link { background-color: #5d5e61; background-image: none; border-left: 2px solid #fff; color: #FFFFFF; display: block; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; height: 25px; padding: 120px 0px 0px 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; width: 91px; outline-style: none;}
<!-- HOME -->
ul#cssmw > li#home > a:active, ul#cssmw > li#home > a:focus { background-color: #bc8548; background-image: url("../images/misc/nav-arrow.png"); background-position: center 143px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #FFFFFF; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; outline-style: none;padding-bottom:20px;margin-top:-20px;overflow:hidden;}
ul#cssmw > li#home:hover > a, ul#cssmw > li#home:hover > a:link {background-color: #bc8548; background-image: url("../images/misc/nav-arrow.png"); background-position: center 143px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #FFFFFF; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; padding-bottom:20px;margin-top:-20px;overflow:hidden;}
ul#cssmw > li#home.current > a.current, ul#cssmw > li#home.current > a.current:link { background-color: #bc8548; background-image: url("../images/misc/nav-arrow.png"); background-position: center 143px; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #FFFFFF; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; outline-style: none;padding-bottom:20px;margin-top:-20px;overflow:hidden;}As you can see in the first line, I created a padding of 120px which set the space which was clickable
Obviously this was just one navigation point but there were others which had different coloured hover/on states.
and for a visual ref, have attached a screenshot of the nav showing that the on effect isnt just limted to the text area ...
