Struggling with adjusting margins and CSS…please help!

Hi everyone,

Please forgive me if these sound like silly questions but I’m brand new to wordpress and CSS. I’m not fully up to speed yet with everything but I’m trying to learn. I created a website, a child theme, and published some content on my first page.

The formatting of the page came out looking very ugly though.

Here is what it looks like:
http://oi58.tinypic.com/qq27uo.jpg

Here is what I want it to look like: http://oi60.tinypic.com/30w78yg.jpg

The adjustments I am looking for have to do with:
– how to get the “white space margin” on the left hand side of the body of text (review second link to see what i mean)
– determining the exact width of the body text in the second link (pixel count) (review second link to see what i mean)
– how to get the “white space margin” on the right hand side of the body of text (review second link to see what i mean)

Thank you so much in advance for your help.