Putting Fade Background in Sidebars, and Removing Grey Blocks next to Widgets

2 questions:
1) I'm trying to put a rounded-corner border around my sidebar widgets, with a simple fade-blue-to-white background image behind the title/links. If you go to http://www.thedigitalrecordingstudio.info at look at the Recent Posts, Recommended and Tags in the right sidebar, you'll see what I'm trying to simulate. That bordered, faded box is a .jpg image file living in that theme called Amazona (obvious name!) which I'd like to insert into Atahualpa. Can I just put the code into the Sidebar>Style option, or do I have to follow it up in the CSS and/or sidebar.php. I'm not a coder, so I need all the guidance I can get, thanks

2) In all the Atahualpa widget link lists, you get these little grey blocks just to the left of each link (no matter if your remove all padding.) Just want the words, no grey boxes...how do I get rid of 'em?