How-To: Show 4 most recent post titles, date, time using common styling

I’d like to come up with some code to display the 4 most recent posts, their date and time values and their thumbnail images as well. I’d like them to all have the same styling and background. And most importantly update dynamically.

I tried to modify the default Recent Posts widget to get what I want but its not getting me anywhere. If I’m describing this terribly take a look at the image here:

http://myhd2.com/wp-content/updates.png

basically a styled recent posts widget with thumbnails. Help!