Like if I wanted just the left and right column to have a certain color background, how would I do that?

Also, how do I change the size of the text? What would i need to insert into the stylesheet?

For size of text:
body, a {
font-size: 10pt;}

in your stylesheet, you would add the background to the css to be applied to your different areas...

background: #ffffff url(SomeImage.gif);

thanks, you guys

no worries.