Magento 1.9 – Add Block in Footer Reference

When you add a block directly inside header block, magento will put your block just after all of it's child block that are added via other layout xml files that are processed before your pinsearch.xml.

Basically a header block contains following blocks by default. This is added via page.xml which will get processed before your pinsearch.xml

<block type="page/html_header" name="header" as="header">
    <block type="page/template_links" name="top.links" as="topLinks"/>
    <block type="page/switch" name="store_language" as="store_language" template="page/switch/languages.phtml"/>
    <block type="core/text_list" name="top.menu" as="topMenu" translate="label">
        <label>Navigation Bar</label>
        <block type="page/html_topmenu" name="catalog.topnav" template="page/html/topmenu.phtml"/>
    </block>
    <block type="page/html_wrapper" name="top.container" as="topContainer" translate="label">
        <label>Page Header</label>
        <action method="setElementClass"><value>top-container</value></action>
    </block>
    <block type="page/html_welcome" name="welcome" as="welcome"/>
</block>

see top.container (which is the wrapper block that you are mentioning, I hope) block is loading here. So when we add your block directly under header block, it just come just below welcome (This is not accurate. But if we consider page.xml only, this is true :-))

So if you need your block just inside the wrapper block, then what you need to is include your block inside wrapper block itself

<default> 
   <reference name="header">
       <reference name="top.container">
            <block type="core/template" name="pinsearch" template="pinsearch/pinsearch.phtml"/>
       </reference>
     </reference> 
  <default> 

Now suppose you need to include the block as child of header block itself, but need to display above the wrapper block (or any other child block), then what you need to do is.

<default> 
   <reference name="header">
        <block type="core/template" name="pinsearch" as="pinSearch" template="pinsearch/pinsearch.phtml"/>
     </reference> 
  <default> 

Then go to app/design/frontend/<package>/<theme>/template/page/html/header.phtml and then specify your block wherever you needed to display it as like this

  <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('pinSearch') ?>

Hope that clears your doubt.. Happy coding sis :-)

<remove /> is a node which doesn't need to be inside any other node or reference. It is applied "globally" and last, so wherever you put it, it is applied.

You didn't post your complete contacs.xml so I can only guess, but this should work:

<contacts_index_index translate="label">
    <remove name="shopper_footer_banners"/>
</contacts_index_index>

If it doesn't make sure your block has exactly this name and your layout cache is up to date.