Footer Widgets

In twenty eleven, I had footer widgets to create a menu in the footer with three columns. How do you do it in twenty twelve? I placed the widgets in the 2 footer boxes at the bottom right of the widget sidebar but no results. Also I was able to make the background for the footer the same as my background (red) at http://roundhousetalk.com but I do have the colophon code to do that. Using a child theme, would it be placed in a footer.php copied into the child theme directory, or just added to the twenty twelve directory in the footer.php? Thanks.