Mo, what white balance were you using on this. It looks as if the camera was set on daylight or cloudy, but under incandescent light such as this, you should use the tungsten setting -- the little light light bulb icon on your white balance dial.
I think many of your problems are caused by faulty white balance. A great advantage of the digital camera is that you can see exactly what your pictures will look like before you make them. Just press the white balance control and try out different white balance settings on a given and pick the one that looks the most natural to you.
