How to Live an Aesthetic Life by Wearing, Eating, Traveling By, and Listening to Specific Colors for a Week

For seven consecutive days, we chose a single color and attempted to dress in that color, eat only foods of that color, listen to music related to that color, and generally make as many choices as possible¹ to conform to that color.

Monday - Red
Tuesday - Orange
Wednesday - Yellow
Thursday - Green
Friday - Purple
Saturday - Brown
Sunday - Black and White

While an artist might undertake such a regime for "high art" and a celebrity might do so for neurotic needs-attention-itis, we did this because it sounded like fun, presented an interesting culinary and sartorial challenge, and it made a good story and an even better Instructable.

Here's how we did it, including recipes and tips for successfully navigating a monochromatic dressing- and eating-disorder.

¹ Thinking in the color didn't go so well, but we did try.

Step 1 Red Pomegranate Raspberry Smoothie - Red Day Breakfast

For Red Breakfast, we made a raspberry pomegranate smoothie. Cranberries would have been nice, but we were out.

Approximate ingredients:
pomegranate rooibos tea
banana
frozen raspberries
psyllium husks (for body)
rice protein powder
chocolate
pomegranate syrup
stevia
cashew macadamia nut butter
egg whites
sea salt
allspice
cardamom

Steep the tea and dissolve the chocolate in hot water for 5 minutes. Let the chocolate tea mixture cool. Mix all ingredients together and blend until smooth.

Turn on your red playlist, and drink while wearing red and holding your red sweatshirt. Get angry. Look for a red car to borrow.

Comments

[AbstractDragon]

Whiter Shade of Pale needed to be in there. For the spacey effect.

[AbstractDragon]

Hey, no Brown-eyed Girl? Shame on you.
And you know, the opening line of California Dreaming should have qualified it to be on the list.

[iceng]

Did you use cameras of the appropriate color for this ible.

[NightElectric]

Knights in White Satin anybody? :D

[Miss_Chievous666]

Black metal ;D thats a whole genre right there!

[Frankie Daileigh]

here are the traditional colours

Monday (Lundi / Moon day) white, pink
Tuesday (Mardi / Mars day) red
Wednesday (Mercredi / Mercury day) purple, silver
Thursday (Jeudi ? Jupiter day) Green
Friday (Vendredi / Venus day) blue
Saturday (Samedi / Saturn day) black
Sunday (Dimanche / Sun day) orange, yellow, gold

[dummy1977]

As far back as I can remember (around 5 years old) I have always had different colors (in a textured pattern) associated with the days of the week.

I seem to match closest with Monday and Thursday on your list of traditionals. :)

[mikesty]

Awesome and what not, but how could you forget Red, Red Wine by UB40?!

[oldboy2003]

Very first thing I thought after looking at the list of songs. :D

[Zibodiz]

Totally, how could you have a list of 'red' music, and have nothing from the band called, simply, "Red"? lol.  They're one of my favorites.

[donnauwanna]

More tinted tunes:
(courtesy of 'dofo and I. we were bored and browsing through itunes.)

Red
"Red Sweater" - The Aquabats
"99 Luftballons" - Nena
Red Blood Cells (whole album) - the White Stripes

Orange
"Orange" - the Dandy Warhols
Agent Orange (any album)
the Oranges Band (any album)

Yellow
"Mellow Yellow" - Donovan
"Watching that Chair Painted Yellow" - the Twilight Sad
"Who Loves the Sun?" - the Velvet Underground

Green
"Green Corn" - Leadbelly
"Everything's Gone Green" - New Order
the Green Album (whole album) - Weezer
Adam Green (any album)

Blue
"Blue Velvet" - Bobby Vinton
"Blue Monday" - New Order
"Song for a Blue Guitar" - Red House Painters
"Mr. Blue" - Yaz
"Am I Blue?" The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
the Blue Album (whole album) - Weezer

Puple/Violet
"Purple Toupee" - TMBG
"Violet" - Hole
Deep Purple (any album)

Black and White
"Black and White" - Serge Gainsbourg
"Black Tongue" - the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Paint it Black- the Rolling Stones
"Black Velvet" - Alanna Myles
"White Riot"- the Clash
the White Album (whole album) - the Beatles
the Black Album (whole album) - Jay-Z
Black Flag (any album)
Barry White (any album)

---

Seems like it was quite the amazing experiment, I must say. I'm turning all kinds of colors with envy.

[watermelonhead]

whatt about any song by the white stripes?

[mutherland]

a few friends did something kind of like this where we ate the foods of certain colors for each day of the week and we called it rainbow food week. But this looks like alot of fun, Great Instructable!

[sitearm]

Eric; So YOU're the one invented Instructables... nice to meet you.

I like the listing of music for each color.

Can you say more who each of the people are in the pictures with you

Cheers for this ridic... um, I mean inTRIguing instructable ;)

Site

[Exocetid]

Sorry if this was already commented on, but neither white nor black are colors. One is the absence of and the other is the complete collection of colors. i'll leave you to determine which is which.

[merijnvw]

This looks like Dutch queensday

[merijnvw]

Where's Golden Brown?

[aramanthe]

The whole yellow thing should be second nature to me, as I live in Amarillo, TX but I still despise the color. You did it splendidly, though!

[hedghawg71]

Ya'll really need to join a fashion school.

[hedghawg71]

Damned! This looks like a prison inmate get together at the visitor center.

[hedghawg71]

Man, these folks oughtta put down the crack pipe when they look at Rooms to Go catalogs.. "smacks forehead"

[rami_lpm]

also refrain from away missions.

[polymeme]

Lemon poppyseed muffins are generally pretty yellow as well.

[Kryptonite]

Step 3: "He [randofo] didn't even notice we borrowed it!"

You cannot understand how hard I laughed.

[EmmettO]

It suddenly occurred to me, who is taking these pictures (Duh!)? In most of them there are three of you but every once in a while there are four. Okay so that means in the pictures of three the fourth is taking the picture, what about when all four are in the picture? Timer? It does seem like you had a standard place for the dining room table shots. I realize it's not rocket surgery but curiosity struck me.

[Punkergal]

Yesss...Your plates are cool...That must freak out dinner guests every once in awhile...

[EmmettO]

That was what I noticed also. I thought they were eating bugs for a moment! Makes me wonder what other people would think of if they saw random pictures of my house/things. No, no, wait I already know what they think. Everyone knows I'm nuts. . .

[EmmettO]

I would have been to this point on day two! I'm not sure if I should say "way to go!" or "you must have some kind of compulsive disorder!" for getting this far.

[kmmich]

I always thought Bach feels pretty orange, especially his Brandenburg concertoes. But people always start laughing whenever I suggest that some music associates very well with a specific colour...

[Punkergal]

Hey I'm with you. I tend to think of colors when I listen to music. I also tend to think of shapes when I'm trying to describe a flavor...We should just call it a sign of intelligence...!

[kmmich]

O yes, flavor and shapes or textures... Great to hear of someone else thinking the same way! I think it actually has a name, this association thing (synesthesia, just found it on Wikipedia). But intelligence is also a good name, I'm sure :)

[Punkergal]

I once real an article about children who were associating colors with letters, for example, W would always be brown in their mind...I wonder if this is the same thing?

[EmmettO]

Thats actually a condition called synesthesia where one mental pathway activates another normally unrelated pathway.

[gowithflo]

You are probably already aware that a fellow Bay Area person and "Post Porn Modernist" Annie Sprinkle has been doing this, but instead of days she and her partner are doing YEARS ! http://www.loveartlab.org/ they even get married every year in a different color.
IMHO skipping Blue for Brown was a travesty, blue is a primary color. Curious as to what you were thinking there.
Very cute project.

[ericlawrence]

Linda Montano did this for 14 years 1984-1998. http://www.lindamontano.com/living_art/index.html

[ewilhelm]

We opted to skip blue for purple, as many blue food turn purple when cooked.

[JuJuBe1115]

Paint It Black, Back In Black, Black-Eyed Peas, White and Nerdy, The White Stripes... All songs/artists that would also fit. :)

[JuJuBe1115]

Ed Alleyne-Johnson's music would have been perfect for this project. He has an album called Purple Electric Violin Concerto, and his album Ultraviolet is all colour: White (Intro) Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet Ultraviolet White (Outro)

[Christo]

Curse my inquisitive nature. My curiosity couldn't handle it, so I checked the page source. The smaller box's caption in the second picture on step 28 reads "Urine." Regardless, this is a really funny idea and well presented. I am now resolved to pester a couple of friends until they agree to do this.

[masterochicken]

Oh thank you. I was just about to do that but I had forgotten how.