To the first one -- no matter how much you work your monitor, the printed piece will always seem darker and less saturated. No reason to go into a long, technical discussion, save that your monitor works in RGB, which is an additive form of colour manipulation, while a printer works in CMYK, which is a subtractive form. The monitor works with a much broader gamma, which is a term that describes all the colours it can create, than even the best printer can reproduce. You'll get reasonably close, SS, but you'll never have a complete match.

To the second -- there are several online print shops, like Vistaprint.com, that handle online orders for things like this. But if your friend lives in the States, ask him/her to check out the local Kinko's. It's generally very good quality, on a wide range of stocks, and generally dirt cheap.

docandraider.com -- the collected cartoons of Doc and Raider