Fountain: [spoiler]You get it when you donate 500,000 bells and throwing an axe into it gets you either the Silver or Golden axe - it's apparently random, and you might not get anything.[/spoiler] Oh, and you can NOT get both a windmill and a lighthouse.
New House Layout: [spoiler]You can expand your main room twice, as before, and you still get the second floor room, but you no longer get the three additional rooms. Instead, you get a basement and the final payment is only 598,000 bells. I think this was done to get people to change their layouts every month as per the HRA's suggestions, and I guess I'm glad that I don't have to pay Nook an additional 1.7 million bells because that money is needed elsewhere in this game.[/spoiler]
Yeah, I think the river is intentionally bad in this game and the bridges are inconvenient, most likely because you have to donate a bunch of money in order to get a new one. On the other hand, McDohl's town is awesome because the museum/town hall/Nook's/Able Sisters places are all in the same spot.
The guide doesn't seem to mention anything about getting pictures from animals, unless it's in some obscure corner of the book I haven't read yet. I still don't know if they are even in the game or not.