Hey- perhaps for the newbies starting out, you may want to add that you can request multiple nouns using と, like in this sentence: 三個のリンゴと五個のオレンジをください。 Of course that type of thing should be relatively obvious, but you never know. It could come in handy. :P
Thanks; I'll definitely add that when I write a more extensive description for this page (of course, if you feel like writing one [see pages like ‾たい or ‾ながら for good examples], I'll be happy to check it and put it up.
Hmm - I would not say the second at all. お願いします typically follows a request for an action by the other party (among a thousand other things). When you are requesting a *thing*, ください is just fine :).
To clarify, where I have heard お願いします used in practice is often at a restaurant, where people are asking for XXX 寿司お願いします。Could this be a local variation thing?