advice on home page set up

I’m very new to WordPress, and I’m still not too sure about how to get the desired effect for my website. If I could get some advice on how to achieve the following through template files, I’d appreciate it:

1. I want the home page to display only a few (1-3) of the most recent blog posts, in addition to other content.

2. I want a separate page to be the blog main page (not the front/home page).

Thanks for the help.

– Daniel