DIY Leaf Flowers

Posted on October 24, 2014 by Victoria Vitale

Three years ago, I read an interesting guest blog post on Design*Sponge by artist Kate Pruitt. She took autumn leaves and transformed them into a beautiful bouquet of flowers. How did she do it? I was sure to find out. Living on a breathtaking college campus in upstate New York at the time, I walked the campus to find fallen leaves. It was such a fun project that I decided to make it again for you here today. It’s the perfect time of year to be collecting leaves of all shapes, sizes, and colors — ingredients to surely make a beautiful arrangement!

Materials:

15 or so leaves per flower (dry and freshly fallen)
Thin, straight sticks (one per flower)
Washi tape

The first time that I made these flowers, I used maple leaves and followed Kate’s instructions more closely. This season, it has been quite difficult finding rich, red leaves in Philadelphia. I adapted my folding technique to work with these pretty yellow leaves I collected. Above are step-by-step picture instructions on how to fold and create your own flowers.

This is one DIY project where I wished I had three hands. It can become difficult as you add more “petals” to your flower to hold them, fold them, and then place the stick in the center of the bunch to begin taping it. My third yellow flower completely fell out of my hand when I began taping it to the stick, so I started over. If it becomes frustrating, take a break and go make some tea. The end results are completely worth it!

Below is a picture of my red leaf flowers three years ago. They kept their red color and dried beautifully. My housemates and I enjoyed them on our dining table for about three months!

What are you making this season? Share your fall DIY creations on Instagram with #scissorsandsage.

Spooky Chocolate Cake Doughnuts

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Victoria Vitale

A few weeks ago, Anne received a care package in the mail from her mom, Janet. Among the goodies were tools to make Halloween-themed treats: a mini doughnut pan and spooky sprinkles! It’s always exciting to add new kitchen gadgets to our ever-growing collection.

Anne decided to whip up a batch of cake doughnuts this weekend using the recipe from the pan’s packaging. They are delicious, and were incredibly easy to make. It was a fun project for a Saturday afternoon at home. Below, I’ve created a “recipe view” so that you can print it for easy access and use in your own kitchen!

Spooky Chocolate Cake Doughnuts (via Norpro)

Prep time: 15 minutes | Bake time: 8 minutes | Yields: 24 doughnuts

For the batter:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 unsweetened baking cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp butter, melted

For the glaze:

1 cup confectioner’s sugar
2 tbsp hot water

Before starting, here are some items that you will need: Mini doughnut pan, cooking or baking spray (we used Crisco brand), and spooky sprinkles

Preheat oven to 325°F. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. In a medium mixing bowl, combine eggs, sugar, and vanilla until thick. In a small mixing bowl, combine milk and butter. Alternately combine egg mixture and milk mixture into the flour mixture. Blend until smooth and soft.

Spray pan lightly with cooking or baking spray. Pour batter into a piping bag, and fill doughnut molds 2/3 full with batter. (Or, pour batter into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag and squeeze batter down into one corner. Using scissors, snip one tip of the Ziploc to create an opening of no more than 1/8″.) Bake for 8 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Carefully transfer doughnuts to a cooling rack. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

Combine glaze ingredients in a small bowl. Dip tops of cooled doughnuts in the glaze, and finish with spooky sprinkles immediately. Enjoy!

From Scissors & Sage

After taste-testing a doughnut (read: several doughnuts), both Anne and I felt that they could have tasted a bit more chocolatey. Let us know if you make these at home, or if you experiment with adding more chocolate flavor. What other spooky recipes have you been making this Halloween season? Tag photos on Instagram with #scissorsandsage!

Lead chef and hand model: Anne Kenealy

Picking Favorites

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Victoria Vitale

It feels like one of those wrap-yourself-up-in-a-blanket-on-the-couch kind of fall days. I thought I’d take a few minutes to share some things I’ve been enjoying around the web recently. For starters, this picture of Paris in autumn from Alesia-Jasmine takes my breath away. You would think that after many fun trips this summer, I would be itching to hunker down while the seasons change. Alas, I’ve caught the travel bug yet again.

As the temperatures cool, though, I can begin to turn up the heat in my kitchen again. Natalie over at Food Fetish has an excellent tutorial on how to make your own beet pasta. I can’t wait to give this a try. And that avocado hummus from Jaclyn at Cooking Classy has my heart singing!

The changing seasons means that more layers, shoes, and weather-related accessories begin to show up in your entryway. Elsie’s mudroom organization project on A Beautiful Mess is a cute, rustic, and indeed organized way to house all kinds of items — right up my alley! I especially love those clipped photos up top.

While I’m not a die-hard Halloween fan, I can appreciate a good DIY project or themed treat. Those cute pumpkins with bat wings from Trendenser seem super easy to whip up. I’d imagine that taping toothpicks to the back of the black construction paper would be a great way to insert the wings into the pumpkin. Top it off by Sharpie-ing your dinner guests’ names on the pumpkins and you’ll have the perfect alternative place cards for a spooky gathering.

Who isn’t a fan of using one item two different ways? These ghost cookies from Michelle at Make Me Cake Me are actually made with a tulip cookie cutter turned upside-down! Genius in my book.

And finally, let’s talk about these mysterious yet amazing-looking dark chocolate zucchini cake waffles. Jonathan from The Candid Appetite whipped these up. The second I live in an apartment with a kitchen larger than a shoebox, I am investing in a waffle maker. For now, we must stick to making pancakes in our cast-iron pan.

The transition from summer to fall is one that I greatly enjoy. I love the slowly changing wardrobe, the time spent in the kitchen, and bundling up for a good movie or TV show. It also means I can start looking at yarn again (something I cannot bring myself to do in the heat of summer). I love this article on why you should knit. I’ve already got two projects going, plus one I finished in early spring that I’ve yet to share here!

Stay tuned for more posts in my new “Picking Favorites” series. I am hoping to feature more work from other blogs and websites as a way of sharing my inspirations here on Scissors & Sage.

My New Recipe Box

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Victoria Vitale

Happy Sunday! Are you all having nice weekends? Yesterday, I had the pleasure of going to a 90th birthday party for my…well, I don’t know how we’re related. That’s the thing about big Italian families. It was a celebration for the books, though, that’s for sure!

For those of you on your computers and on my site directly, you will notice many new changes to the looks of Scissors & Sage. For you loyal subscribers out there, visit http://www.scissorsandsage.com to see my updates! I’ve designed a new header logo, a much-needed menu of categories up top, and new social media icons that I coded myself! Anne snapped some pictures for the updated sidebar and “New Reader?” section. I hope you all enjoy the new layout!

This week, I thought I’d share my latest love: my recipe box. Anne gave it to me for my birthday in August, and it was just what I wanted! I had been eyeballing it on the Rifle Paper Co. website for about six months. You see, I had a pretty good system for my recipes pre-recipe box — a binder with tabs and plastic sleeves. But this, this is just on another level. I stared googly-eyed at it for probably three or four days before starting to transfer recipes.

Some who know me might say that I’m neat or maybe organized. Others, like my college roommates, might call me compulsively neat AND organized. Everyone has their way and, needless to say, I like things in their place.

When I started my recipe transfer and looked more closely at the pre-written letterpress tabs the box came with, I started to wish that I could have decided on my own categories. Where was the salads category? And what about sides? Does a quiche go under breakfast or eggs? And why on EARTH were breads and pastas in the same category?! As I’ve previously said, and as it’s written in my “New Reader?” section, pasta is its own food group.

I began breathing a little bit more quickly as my eyes darted around trying to put an order to all of this chaos (note: there was literally no actual chaos to be found). Then it hit me: I could make my own tabs to supplement what the box came with! I had recently picked up some thin chip board from Paper Source, and it was the perfect material. I traced an existing divider and then cut it out. I borrowed Anne’s alphanumeral stamp (the kind that librarians use), and it was finished!

A month or so into using my recipe box, I have to say that it is quite functional. I use some categories more than others (do you see how big desserts is?) and others not at all (seafood). The box also came with 24 blank recipe cards that I am really excited to start using.

I am so incredibly happy with how my recipe box turned out. There are so many family recipes, so many stories, and equally as many happy memories spent in the kitchen and at the dining table. This is my holy text.