Best way to Backup and Restore

Seems like this would be obvious but not finding a thread.

Would like to backup coreelec and all my skin customizations.

Can these be done in one shot? Or do I have back system
and then skin separately?

In CoreELEC settings the Backup System option will backup all your settings including your skin.
A good idea is to copy the backups outside of the hardware storage as a secondary backup in case something goes really bad.
I usually SMB into my hardware and copy the backup zips (Backup Folder) onto my PC .

Perfect, thanks for the explination!