Magento – Change Individual Category Text Color in Navigation Menu

After struggling a bit here is the solution I found. I let my observer execute after the one in Mage_Catalog and decided to re-create the menu entirely.
The main idea is to get all the existing menu items put them in a temporary array, remove them from the menu then add my links between the existing items and in the end add all items to the menu again. Something like this:

public function addItemsToTopmenuItems($observer){
    //get the menu object -Type Varien_Data_Tree_Node
    $menu = $observer->getMenu();
    //get the tree object in the menu -type Varien_Data_Tree
    $tree = $menu->getTree();
    //get current page handler
    $action = Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getAction()->getFullActionName();
    $brandNodeId = 'category-node-brand';
    //set the node id, label and url
    $data = array(
        'name' => Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Brands'),
        'id' => $brandNodeId,
        'url' => Mage::getUrl('brands'),
        'is_active' => ($action == 'brands')
    );
    //create a node object
    $brandNode = new Varien_Data_Tree_Node($data, 'id', $tree, $menu);
    //temporary array with nodes
    $menuItems = array();
    //my first menu item
    $menuItems[] = $brandNode;
    //loop through existing menu items, add them to the array and remove them from the    menu
    foreach ($menu->getChildren() as $child){
        //add the item to the temp array
        $menuItems[] = $child;
        //remove item from the menu
        $menu->removeChild($child);
        //I need to add a new menu item after the category with id 6
        //don't worry the id is not hard coded. it comes from a config setting
        //I just added 6 here to make it easier to read
        if ($child->getId() == 'category-node-6'){
            //create a new node as $brandNode called $newNode
            ...
            //add the node to my temp array
            $menuItems[] = $newNode;
        }
    }
    //add other nodes at the end of my temp array
    ...
    //recreate the menu in the order I need
    foreach ($menuItems as $child){
        $menu->addChild($child);
    }
}

This seams to solve my problem,but I'm hoping for a more elegant method of doing it.

I had same problem, after some coding I made this in template/catalog/navigation/left.phtml:

first line:

<?php $ct = Mage::registry('current_category')->getID(); ?>

in the end of the file(before endif;)

<?php elseif( $ct == 92 || $ct == 85 || $ct == 224): ?>
<?php
$currentcategory = Mage::registry('current_category');
$subcategorys = explode(',' , $currentcategory->getChildren());


?>

<div class="block block-layered-nav">
    <div class="block-title">
        <strong><span><?php echo $this->__('Browse By') ?></span></strong>
    </div>
    <div class="block-content">
        <dl id="narrow-by-list2">
            <dt><?php echo $this->__('Category') ?></dt>
            <dd>
                <ol>
                <?php foreach($subcategorys as $cat): ?>
                     <?php $cate =  Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($cat); ?>
                    <li>

                        <a href="<?php echo $cate->getUrl()?>" <?php if ($this->isCategoryActive($cate)): ?> class="current"<?php endif; ?>><?php echo $this->escapeHtml($cate->getName()) ?>(<?php echo $cate->getProductCount() ?>) </a>                  
                    </li>
                <?php endforeach; ?>
                </ol>
            </dd>
        </dl>
        <script type="text/javascript">decorateDataList('narrow-by-list2')</script>
    </div>
</div>

<?php endif; ?>