The following shortcode will display blog posts and not portfolio items. There was a typo in my previous reply- sorry. You can use this shortcode pretty much anywhere – in the home page too.
[show_post_snippets post_type="post" number_of_columns=4 post_count=4 image_size="medium" show_meta=true excerpt_count=50 display_text=true taxonamy= "category" terms="inspiration,technology"]