Picture Help with XTi

First things first,,,I am new to this board and have been reading a lot of the posts. There is a lot of great info here..........

Now, maybe one of you can help me out with a picture i am trying to take.. See below

http://mbike4fun.com/i​ndex_files/Page523.htm

Sorry the picture will not post here. If you click on the link you will see both pics and the picture info for each.

Now here is my question the presents in front of the snow man are Red, Green, and Blue.
The only way am able to get good color in these is If I use the flash setting:

I think the problem here is that you're basically trying to photograph a light source and the objects being lit by the light source at the same time which is not possible without the lights being blown out or the house being too dark. HDR might be able to help with this but I'm not as experienced as others here, they could probably help you better.

You can not get a good exposure of a night time snow sceene in any of the program modes. You will have to shoot in manual, drag your shutter, and use a tripod or rest your camera on a solid object so it does not move.

Don't use flash or the flash setting to do this right.

For example, if you are using, oh let say 800 ISO setting, you will want your apeature setting to be close to wide open (about 3.5 or 4 or 5.6). Now for dragging your shutter (this just means to use a slower shutter speed to alow for more light to enter the camera for a brighter exposer). Try a first exposure with your shutter speed set at 1/8 or 1/4 and see how your images turn out. From this starting point you can adjust the shutter speed slower or faster if it needs more light or less.

I would set you color balance to automatic. Chances are the color will not be perfect (snow seldom is when photographed) so you may need to adjust your color in your image editing program - Photoshop or DPP that came on the CD with your camera.

You might also try "painting" the house with another light source. One way would be to turn off the Christmas lights after a short time (have someone "blip" them, perhaps) and then use a floodlight to illuminate the house, sweeping it across the entire area during the (long) exposure.

I photographed our front decorated for Halloween using my XTi and the Nifty 50mm 1.8. I did have some blurring, but not bad for hand held. I was pleasantly surprised how great the on board flash worked with the 50mm. Nearly looked like a daylight shot. I recommend buying the 50mm 1.8 for these shots and for all of the low light Holiday photos you will be wanting to take. The 1.8 allows you to need less flash for more natural results. The 50 1.8 can be purchased online for approx. $80. It's super sharp and many of us use it as a portrait lens. Good Luck!

Thanks for the info. i will try to follow some of the suggestions above. i would like to thank everyone for the time..........

50mm with 1.8f stop should partally solve the issue