homepage preferred posts and categories

After trying to tweek this very nice theme for a couple of weeks, I still didn't managed to find a solution for the following issue. I would like to selected pages and post to show up at the homepage list. And even more problematic: I define category descriptions and category featured pictures, and I would like to present them to on the homepage... Thanks and keep up the good work, gonna subscribe for the simple catch pro, just to show my gratitude for the non-pro version.