Featured Content pulling too many posts, pages

I would like the Featured Content area on the home page to show only 3 posts, excatly like your demo content--3 posts that I have categorized as "HomePageFeature". Instead it pulls any posts and even the About page. As a temp fix, I added to my CSS:

#featured-post-4 {display: none;}
#featured-post-5 {display: none;}
#featured-post-6 {display: none;}
#featured-post-7 {display: none;}
#featured-post-8 {display: none;}
#featured-post-9 {display: none;}

But this is only a bandaid, because as soon as I publish a post (any category) it pulls it onto the home page. What do I need to do? I have the customizer set to 3 columns, 3 "No.of Featured Content". Thanks