Month: September 2026

Gather / Recipes

Welcome to Fall: Soup Season Has Arrived

There is a particular stillness that settles in on the first day of fall. Not a big shift, not yet, just a quiet acknowledgment that something has turned. The light comes in lower now, more amber than gold, and it lands differently on everything it touches.

As I sit here in Vermont on a chilly, rainy day, the kind that makes you want to stay in your socks and not commit to anything productive, I have a pot of black bean soup bubbling in the slow cooker. It felt like the only right way to welcome the season. Something warm working away in the background while the rain does its thing outside.

Easy and delicious Black Bean soup recipe by Jacques Pepin

If you have been here a while, you might remember the black bean soup I shared a few months back, inspired by Jacques Pépin. I am making it again today, but have adapted it for the slow cooker. I boiled the dry beans in a pot of water for about 10 minutes first, then rinsed and drained them before adding everything to the slow cooker. It gets you nearly all the way to that same rich, tender pot without needing to babysit it on the stove all day. You can find the full recipe here: Jacques Pépin’s Black Bean Soup.

It is soup season now, officially and unofficially. The kind of season where the best plans are the ones that require the least of you. A pot on low. A good book nearby. Something simmering that will make the whole house smell like it in an hour.

Photo by Claudia Reese for August Table

Setting the Table for the Season

A few weeks ago I mentioned that our Juniper brown and Talelayo brown prints kept finding their way into our fall daydreams, and now that autumn is officially here, I wanted to share how simple it can be to bring that feeling to your own table, wherever you are.

There is something about brown as a base color that people underestimate. It reads as neutral, but it is not flat. It has warmth built into it already, so the table does half the work for you before you add a single thing. Lay a Talelayo brown cloth down and let it be the quiet part of the story. Then bring in whatever fall is offering near you right now. Small apples with a blush still on one side. A few sprigs of goldenrod or dried grasses from a walk. Candles in a dull brass or warm amber tone.

The napkins in Juniper brown go beautifully at each place, folded simply, no tricks needed. Some tables want a flourish. This one wants restraint. A wooden bowl of walnuts still in their shells makes a lovely centerpiece, mostly for the sound they make when you move them, and partly because they look like they belong there in a way nothing store bought quite does.

August Table Juniper Napkin in Kolkata Brown

If you are setting your own table this weekend, my advice is to resist the urge to overdo it. Fall gives you so much good color and texture for free. A few apples. Some dried grasses if you have access to them. Candles in a warm, low tone. A pot of something good on the stove or in the slow cooker. Let the rest take care of itself.

Wherever You Are This Season

Maybe your life feels settled right now, and fall gets to be purely about the joy of it. The candles, the soup, the slower mornings. Or maybe, like so many of us at different points, you are in the middle of something. A move, a transition, a season that has not quite resolved itself yet. Life rarely waits for the tidy moment to hand you a new chapter.

Either way, I hope you still find a reason to set the table this week. Not because everything is finished or figured out, but because a good meal and a beautifully set place have a way of making even an in between season feel a little more like home.

If the Juniper or Talelayo prints are calling to you, you can find them at augusttable.com. Wherever you are this week, I hope your first days of fall feel just as good as they smell.

With warmth,
Carrie

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Design and Lifestyle

A Season of Change

There is a particular quality of light that arrives in early September. Softer at the edges. A little more gold than white. It is the light that tells you, before the calendar does, that something is turning.

I have always loved fall for that reason. It is the season that gives us permission to change. To close one door gently and open another. To let go of what no longer fits and make room for what does.

This year, that permission has felt especially personal.

Where We’ve Been

If you have noticed my silence these past few months, thank you for staying with us anyway. Krister and I have been in the middle of the kind of change that does not leave much room for anything else. We are uprooting our life from Virginia and planting it in Vermont.

It is not a small thing to leave a place. Our shop in White Stone held so much of what August Table became. The linens on the shelves, the conversations with customers who became friends, the quiet mornings before we opened the doors. We closed that brick and mortar space, and I will not pretend there was no grief in it. There was. There still is, a little.

But there is also so much to look forward to. Vermont has been calling to us for a long time, and we are finally answering. Mountains instead of river realm. A slower, quieter kind of beautiful. A new chapter for our family and for August Table.

Going Back to Where We Started

Going forward, August Table will live online only, and in a way, that feels less like a step away and more like a return. This is how we began. Before the shop in White Stone, before the shelves and the front door and the customers who wandered in off the street, we were an ecommerce brand, built one order and one package at a time. Closing our brick and mortar space has felt, unexpectedly, like coming back to our roots. And as we settle into this new season, we are also taking the chance to simplify.

For now, we will no longer be carrying quilts and bedding. It was not an easy decision, but it is the right one for this moment. We want to do fewer things and do them beautifully, rather than spread ourselves thin trying to be everything to everyone.

What remains, and what will always remain, is the heart of why we started this in the first place. High quality linens. Beautiful, considered design. And above all, the belief that a table set with care is one of the most quietly powerful things we can offer the people we love.

Because in the end, this has never really been about the linens. It has been about what happens around them. Hands passing dishes. Conversation that lingers past dessert. The particular kind of connection that only seems to happen when people slow down long enough to break bread together. That is the thing we are protecting as we simplify everything else.

Photo by Claudia Reese with August Table Talelyo Brown napkins and tablecloth

A Little Something for the Table Ahead

To celebrate this new season and to thank you for your patience while we found our footing, we are offering 25% off everything this Labor Day weekend. At checkout use the code: LaborDay25.

Whether you are setting a table for one last summer gathering or starting to think ahead to the cozier tables of fall, we hope something in our collection helps you gather the people you love a little more beautifully.

We are already dreaming up our own fall tablescapes here, and two prints keep finding their way into the mix. Our Juniper print in brown and our Talelayo brown prints feel exactly right for the season ahead, warm and earthy in a way that makes a table feel instantly gathered. You can shop the full collection at www.augusttable.com.

Thank you for being here through the quiet months. For sticking around while we packed boxes and said goodbyes and figured out what comes next. We are so glad to be back, and even more glad to be building this next chapter with you at the table.

With warmth,
Carrie

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