LM13 XFCE panel disppareed and theme screwed up

[Hotwax]

I installed the distro initially with no problems. After a system update, the panel was gone, the wallpaper turned into a solid blue color, and the icon theme looked like a gtk gnome 2 desktop. I ran xfce4-panel in terminal and brought back the panel but the icons are are still the old ones. how do i properly solve this problem? when i restart the panel is gone again, i dont want to have to type in xfce4-panel in terminal each time i boot up.