Change Featured Content

Dear forum,

I customizing the Expound theme for my blog: http://ntropy.de/

I´d like to change the featured content.php so that that big article right below the header is fixed, while the smaller articles can change. (I´d like to separate big articles from “smaller” articles, so they can remain longer. The smaller section should change by date still.

Then I´d like to know how to reduce the height of the “middle part”, the part where the 4 articles are listed so that the sites (FB page etc.) is not that “far” away.

Thank you in advance
Phire