How is the Universe Expanding?

[Crunchy]

I know the galaxies are moving away from each other, but the levels of the universe are somewhat fractal. so are the stars inside galaxies moving away from each other? Are the plants around stars moving away from each other?

2. Since the expansion is a result of the big bang and there were no atoms at that point, at oms would not be a part of the expansion. In fact, the formation of atoms appear to be a reversal of the expansion.

Distances are stretched through the expansion of space. It's as if space itself is stretched..You can think of it like ants walking on a rubber band that is being stretched.  
Two separate ants will move away from each other through the stretching, but the ants themselves keep their length because they are held together by forces which are not changed by the expansion of the rubber beand.
Likewise, in space, all objects which are held together by forces such as gravity or electromagnetism will resist this stretching and keep their sizes because their size is determined by these forces at work in or between them. Two distant objects which are not e.g. bound by gravitation will not have anything compensating the stretching of the space in between and their distance will increase.

I like to think of it like a raisin bread that is rising. The raisins are the galaxies and the dough is "space". As the bread rises, all the raisins are moving away from each other. The only difficulty is in imagining empty space as something that can expand.