I can't turn them off, I've tried selecting blue under the settings on the site and on the user CP settings... neither has worked... they are interfering with the running of my laptop and making the page crash / load slower.

Hello, I have changed the snow setting to off in your user options, they should have stopped for you now.

You can change this on/off here: http://www.teenhelp.org/profile.php?do=editoptions