I know exactly what you mean, and those eyes do tend to distract from the rest of the photo, don't they.

My suggestion would be to either turn on as many lights as possible, wait until the weekend and try during the day, or you could try and play "professional photographer" and get some kind of bright light to carry around with you and set up the lighting like the pros do. I'm thinking something like a trouble light that the guys use to work on cars might work.

Then just be sure to turn the flash off on your camera and you shouldn't have any problems. If the pictures still turn out a little dark, you should be able to lighten them up on your computer.

Good luck and we hope to see some of the results!!