Menu buttons using list items

[theMAD2]

Does anyone know how I can make a list item a link without having to use the text as the link? Each li is a set height and width with a background image, and I've put some text in the li which will be indented off the page but how can I make the actual li a link, not just the text inside it?

 

[theMAD2]

what about the html? do I just wrap the a tags around the li tags?

 

[theMAD2]

I tried that but the text becomes the link not the actual list item. At the moment the list items have ids which are set as fixed sizes in the css. Do you think I should make the a tag the id?