In the ping theme options set the Sitewide color to #000000 and the transition will stop or you need to edit the inline css in the header.php file to stop this transition.
and for the widget section in the footer you have to add background-color to the id #footer-widgets at line 688 in the file style.css
I tried changing it using the theme options panel so to change the color of the footer background you need to edit the id footer_bottom of the style.css file at line 690 and change the background-color to wnatever hex value you want.
Try the theme hueman by Alexander Agnarson. It is of 3 columns and has a theme options panel to help you change stuff on it without any programming knowledge.
Hueman theme
Hey Landray,
Welcome to wordpresss, for the titles in the widgets the colors are defined on line 247 in the file style.css.
Regards,
Play_avi
