Customizing posts.

There are a couple things I want to change about posts. First I want to be able to have several widget areas where each widget only displays a certain category of widget… one for reviews, one for blog posts. And also I would like to know if there is a way to display on my front page the posts in order of oldest to newest. I have used WordPress quite a bit but am only now getting into customizing my sites to make them look better. (rolanddeschain.com will be about my music and music reviews and need to split things up.