i was going to ask this question but figured it out before i did... so ill post it anyway...

it is very easy to do either an inline style --
(<input name="city" size="15" style="font-size:12px; font-family: Helvetica, Sans-Serif;"> )

or set up a class in a stylesheet and call it in the code --
(<input type="text" name="realname" size="20" class="selectBoxes">

in style.css:
.selectBoxes { font-size:10px; font-family: Helvetica, Sans-Serif; } )

i am still confused as to how to get it to work on drop downs though... i can get the font size/family etc to change, but cannot get the actual drop down box to decrease in size... can anyone help with this?

If by "size" you mean the width then you can control that with the "width" property in your style definition.

SELECT {width: 200px;}

or

.selectBoxes {width: 200px;}