Help With Web Design Project

I'm sorry to be asking about this since I know it is all supposed to be very simple, but for some reason I cannot get many things in my web design project to work. I think all my problems are with the attributes, or have exactly I have things positioned. What we’re working on now is setting margins, doing hotspots and image maps, and colors. I can’t figure it out by myself and html help sites on the Intenet only make me more confused. The probeject is over and one with (and I wasn't able to complete it >>), but I don't want to fall too far behind, so I need to know what I've done wrong. Please help me by looking over my code and instructions to see if you know what's wrong! ;_;

The only thing that doesn’t work on this is the background color, which is supposed to be ivory, but is white. This is a problem on all of the other pages, too. The marin may be wrong, too, but since it's something you can't obviously see here I can't be sure.

This is where everything gets confusing. This is the only page I’ve posted because this format is basically the same for all the other pages. The hotposts for dc100 won’t work, the background color won’t work, the text doesn’t look like it should, the images and text won't show up,and the margins aren’t right. Did I put the margin attributes in the right place? I don’t know if I have any of this right, but didn’t put in a semicolon where I should or what.

Here are the instructions:

2. Go to the index.htm file. Change the background color of the page to ivory and set the size of the top margin to 100 pixels wide by 140 pixels high. Set the border width of this inline image to 128 pixels wide by 40 pixels high. Set the border width of this inline image to 0 pixels. Save changes to your file.
3. Go to the pixal.htm file. Make the following style changes to the page:
        Set the background color to ivory and display the background image file back.gif. The image file should be tiled only in the y-direction and should scroll with the web page.
          Set the size of the left margin to 185 pixels.
4. Directly after the tag, insert a paragraph containing the inline image menu.gif. This is the image that contains the list of links that will be displayed along the left margin of the page. Apply the following styles to this image:
          Float the image on the left margin.
          Set the border width to 0 pixels.
          Set the size of the left margin to -185 pixels; this will have the effect of shifting the image to the left margin.
          Set the dimensions of the image to 173 pixels wider by 295 pixels high.
          Set the value of the alt attribute to an empty string, "".
5. Set the dimensions of the logo.jpg inline image to 281 pixels wide by 96 pixels high.
6. Change the color of the two horizontal lines in this page to red.
7. Apply the following style changes to the address element.
         Display the address text in an Arial, Helvetica, or sans-serif font.
          Set the font size to 0.7em.
          Change the font style to normal.
8. Apply the following style changes to the paragraph containing the list of links (located below the address element):
          Display the address text in an Arial, Helvetica, or sans-serif font.
          Set the font size to 0.7em.
9. At the bottom of the file, above the closing tag, insert an image map named "dcpages" containing the following hotspots:
         A rectangular hotspot pointing to the pixal.htm file with coordinates (1,1) and (81,15). The alternate text is "Home".
          A rectangular hotspot for the dc250.htm file with the coordinates (23,50) and (64,62). The alternate text is "DC100".
          A rectangular hotspot for the dc250.htm file with the coordinates (23,64) and (64,79). The alternate text is DC250".
          A rectangular hotspot for the dc500.htm file with the coordinates (23,81) and (64,95). The alternate text is "DC500".
10. Apply the dcpages image map to the menu.gif inline image, located at the top of the page.
11. Save changes to the file.
12. Go to the dc100.htm file and repeat Steps 3 through 11 above. Also, display the h1 heading "DC100" in blue Arial, Helvetica, or sans-serif font. Align the inline image dc100.jpg with the page's right margin. Save your changes to the file.
13. Go to the dc250.htm file and apply the same style changes that you applied to the dc100.htm file. Also, do this for the rest of the files. Save your changes.

Again, if you can help me at all I won’t be able to give anything to you, but you will have my enternal gratitude. ;_;