I need help from someone who knows about cameras!!!

So I read on another blog about focusing on certain things in your pictures. I think its called point focus or something like that anyways I read how to focus on something in the back ground and have what ever it is closer to me out of focus or if I want the thing closest to me in focus and the background out of focus. Does that make since? Anyways so I was trying to figure it out on my camera (cuz I want to learn how to use my camera better to take better pictures). So now its stuck in keeping the background in focus instead of the thing I actually want to take a picture of. Like the pictures above. They all would have been really cute but see in the background its in focus and Holland and the flowers are not. So can anyone tell me how to fix this??? I have a digital rebel 300D if that helps. Melissa maybe do you???