You know how there are some brands you really love one year, but the following season you’re indifferent? TOAST is not one of those brands. With every single catalogue, the mood created by their photography and staging makes me fall in love with them all over again. This December release is just so rustic and lovely.
Can’t get enough of TOAST? That’s ok! You can keep on looking through the TOAST archives, or go directly to a particular season in the list below.
To celebrate the life of C.S. Lewis — he died on this day in 1963 — here are some free printables for you to enjoy. And take some time today to pull an old Lewis book of the shelf and read a chapter or two, won’t you? I promise it will be good for your soul.
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” -Till We Have Faces
C.S. Lewis “The sweetest thing” free printable – Click here to download.
“In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter…The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” -The Weight of Glory
C.S. Lewis “The scent of a flower” free printable – Click here to download.
“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” –The Last Battle
C.S. Lewis “Chapter one” free printable – Click here to download.
The November 2013 edition of the Autumn/Winter Toast UK catalogue (the House + Home and Women’s sections are all merged into one issue now) is stunning for its frozen lakes, tall pines, and slate mountains. These are all aspects of the natural world distinctly lacking in this corner of the world, and I especially miss them as Christmas approaches. Truthfully, I miss the way they look through windowpanes — with me remaining on the warm side — because I do so like to stay toasty. No pun intended.
Want more pretty pictures? You can keep on looking through the TOAST archives, or go directly to a particular season in the list below.
I hardly ever post mobile photographs here — I think low-res images are better suited to Instagram than blogs — but I couldn’t resist sharing this chalk art!
My mind can hardly wrap around such talent. It’s the transitory nature of this medium that is the most profound to me, I think. The image will only last a short time. The artists know this work is temporary, and yet create greatness anyway.
Since I was a little girl and first began to know of wrongs, I have been burdened. I look around me, I listen, I see, and I am weighted down.
There is so much need, so much injustice, so many faces that stare back at me from across the world, so much I cannot do.
But then I hear a voice, speaking to me, saying:
You have a voice.
Use it.
Else you are like a camera which does not see…
…a strap which does not carry…
…instruments which do not write…
…stars which do not shine light.
Speak up for those who are voiceless, those who cannot tell their story.
They have a story waiting to be told.
Tell it.
Speak.
Do not always remain silent.
“Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow. “-Isaiah 1:17
“For if you remain silent at this time … you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”-Esther 4:14
How will you use your voice today?
Spotted in Roxy Marj’s delightful Etsy shop. She says, “[This print] hangs in our office, and reminds me everyday to forget about myself and think of others…”
View it here.
Maybe I’m a little behind the times, but I’d never heard of the Japanese fashion label FRAPBOIS. Have you? I saw one of their lookbook photos from a previous season and was intrigued. A little googling led me to their website, and this absolutely charming music video — so creative!
And all this wonderful autumnal pattern mixing? Count me in! (I’m purely dreaming…the air conditioner is running around the clock and I’m in a tank-top and shorts. Also, I get cold easily. Shhh, just let me think the grass is greener.)
“September morning // still can make me feel that way” -Neil Diamond
Oh, September. It’s hard to think of another month (aside from the Christmas season) which has inspired more songs.
I love this month.
Here’s a playlist of my favorite September songs.
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(Images taken from a moving train somewhere between France and Spain, 2009)
The Oaxacaborn Blog 