Wordpress - displaying specific categories only

I have about a lot of categories and I'd like to make it so that on the main page, only the posts from 1 or 2 specified categories show. To see the posts from the other categories, people will have to click on the names of those categories in the sidebar. Is there any way to do this?

 

Id also like to know how to do this too.

 

Try this:

numberposts = the number of posts you want shown.
category = the ID of the Category you wish to draw posts from

 

Thanks sylv3rblade