While goofing around in the finder today, I found a cool new way to colorize the terminal window. Sure, you can do it through the preferences dialog, but what fun is that?
Instead, pick Show Colors from the Fonts menu. Pick the color you want for a background. Now drag the color swatch to an open (non-text area) of the terminal window. To change the text color, follow the same process, but drop the swatch on some text in the terminal window.
Viola, instant terminal session colors!
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=200011061934043