Home and Garden Event

Creating a palette with Linda Applewhite

Marin County interior designer and HGTV regular Linda Applewhite showed how to develop your own personal color palette during a free demonstration in Sonoma.

The effervescent Applewhite, who has appeared on shows such as "Sensible Chic," also explored the nurturing quality of color in the home.

The talk was at 3 p.m. at Sonoma Country Antiques,
2399 Arnold Drive/Highway 121, south of Sonoma.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

If you missed it, here's what happened. . .

Linda led three days of art-filled fun and design knowledge in Santa Fe in fall -- the perfect time of year to visit the beautiful Southwest.

In addition to Linda's full-day workshop of architectural and interior and exterior design principles, we visited art galleries and antiques shops, enjoyed local foods, toured the Santa Fe Design Center, and had an unprecedented opportunity to see two homes that have been featured on the cover of Su Casa magazine.

All in one weekend!

Seminar Agenda

Linda joined with Waxlander Gallery and Sculpture Garden to host an evening welcome reception in the gallery's 150-year-old adobe on Santa Fe's famous Canyon Road. The gallery was founded by watercolorist Phyllis Kapp 23 years ago and has been exhibiting an energetic and unpredictable arrray of contemporary works in a wide range of media. Housed in a beautiful old adobe and poised behind a garden of beautiful life size bronze sculpture and mesmerizing kinetic art, Waxlander invites you into a world of vibrant color. The Gallery offers collectors a wide variety of contemporary art in watercolor, oil, acrylic, mixed media, kinetic outdoor and bronze sculpture. No visit to Santa Fe and the Santa Fe art community is complete without a leisurely stop at Waxlander. Spouses were invited to the reception to get acquainted.

Before lunch, we toured the home of artist Kirby Kendrick in Santa Fe's historic Garcia Street neighborhood. Linda worked with Kirby on the remodel of her 1932 artist's compound, which was featured on the cover of Su Casa magazine's Fall 2007 issue.

The rustic adobe is filled with old vigas, colorful, hand-painted niches, fabulous artwork and outside, a secret Santa Fe garden.

For lunch, we headed over to the Santa Fe Design Center. Linda led a tour of some of her favorite shops, including Diseños, which carries exceptional Spanish Colonial art and antiques; Sparrow Antiques, which offers vintage textiles and crafts from across the U.S.; and Gloria List Gallery, home to an amazing array of ethnographic or sacred art from throughout the world. Guests had the rest of the afternoon to explore on their own.

The Design Center is a two level shopping center, and the perfect stop for home furnishing and art collection pieces. The Design Center is housed in an art deco building that was formerly a Chevy dealership. This retail space provides large, high ceiling rooms for stores to best show off their works. The Design Center houses over twelve galleries featuring fine photography, antiques, folk art and fine art.

Seminar guests were invited to a private tour of Linda's own 1930s adobe home, Casita Alegria, on Santa Fe's historic east side. The home is featured on the cover of the Spring II 2008 issue of Su Casa, New Mexico's premier design magazine, along with an article written by Linda about her personal discovery of Santa Fe and the transformation of her home. You can read the article by clicking here.

Wine and delicious New Mexican specialties were served on the Casita's patio.

Linda's slide presentation included before and after photos of Casita Alegria's transformation, showing step by step how she updated the floor plan and function of the living spaces, while respecting the original architecture and retaining the character of the old structure. The presentation focused on the principles of good design, and illustrated application of these principles to a range of styles including contemporary, Traditional, Mediterranean and European Country, among others. Her discussion included: