I was sent a pretty awesome kit from Nivea as part of the #NIVEAIndulgence challenge. What is that? Basically, for 10 consecutive days, I replaced my usual body wash/soap products with the NIVEA products I was sent to see if my skin felt any different, etc. The kit also included a scented candle, plush bathrobe, and a $50 gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond to help create my own little bathroom oasis. I was like, “Count me in!” I usually try to just hurry up and get in and out of the shower, so I tried really hard to just unwind and enjoy a spa like experience for 10 days.

Boy was it worth it! As you can see above, I was sent NIVEA Touch of Smoothness (moisturizing body wash) and NIVEA Touch of Renewal (lathering body scrub). I used both during the challenge, and a dollop’s worth on my blue loofah proved to be plenty. I’ll review them both individually:

NIVEA Touch of Smoothness:

• The scent is AWESOME! It’s clean, fresh, and a welcome deviation from my usual floral-esque body wash choices.
• Left me feeling very soft and moisturized in really rough spots like my elbows/knees.
• No oily feeling afterward.
• Suds up really nicely.

NIVEA Touch of Renewal:

• Smells clean and refreshing.
• Has little microbeads that help exfoliate. I wish there were more of them! :( I really think more microbeads would take this to another level.
• I’ve found when using scrubs I tend to have to use more product—not the case here. Lathers up really well and I felt smooth and clean afterwards.
• Of the 2 products, this one probably felt a bit more “spa” like, but I still think I prefer the other body wash just a tad. Both are great though!

Overall, using the 2 products left me feeling clean, soft, moisturized and pampered. And taking this time for myself also helped a lot after stressful days. If I forgot to put on lotion, I was still not ashy/dry on my elbows like usual, so I do think these products helped my skin soak up the NIVEA goodness. My favorite thing other than the cosmetic perks of nicer/smoother skin is the scent. It’s clean and simple. Love it!

To complete my bathroom oasis, I used the $50 gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond to purchase a Bluetooth iHome speaker so I could blast my tunes while I am in the shower.

My husband uses it a lot too, and we love how sleek the white speaker looks on our marble countertops. I feel like I am in a fancy hotel bathroom every time I take a shower. My other favorite part of my bathroom oasis is my shower itself. It’s a semi-circle and the door slides on a track.

I’ve had this shower for almost a year, and I cannot get enough of it. It’s so modern!

Thanks to the #NIVEAIndulgence challenge, I have pampered myself into softer, smoother skin that feels great to the touch. Although every time I get into my bathrobe, I fall asleep. It’s so plush and luxe. I’ve never had a bathrobe before and now I look for excuses to put it on. All the time. Also, I’ve created a #NIVEAIndulgence Pinterest board about things that I think of when I think of indulgence. I dream of indulgent things like spa days, facial treatments, expensive shoes, luxurious naps, tasty food, and exotic destinations. What do you dream of when you think about indulgence?

Well, I want you to indulge and pamper yourself like I got to, so I’m giving away a #NIVEAIndulgence kit like I received!

You’ll get:

• 2 NIVEA products
• Scented candle
• Plush bathrobe
• $50 Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card
• Total value: $150

You can enter below using Rafflecopter. The contest is open from June 29 until July 10. Must be in the US and 18+ to enter/win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The content and opinions on this blog are purely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Beiersdorf Inc., or any of its affiliates. The author has been compensated with free products as part of the author’s participation in this promotion. Even though the author of this blog receives compensation for the posts or advertisements, the author will always provide his or her honest opinion, finding, belief, or experience on those products. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. In addition, the author is professionally and/or personally acquainted with the manufacturer of the products being reviewed. Any results described by the author may not be typical of what consumers should generally expect. Lastly, the author of the blog is not responsible for any comments made in comment section of this blog.

 

Yes. That is a Harry Potter ottoman. It wasn’t meant to be one at the beginning of this project, but things don’t always go as planned.

The inspiration for this whole project is this very expensive Ballard Designs ottoman.

At $269, I was never, ever going to buy it. Ever. Can you imagine Hermione paying for an overpriced ottoman? I think not.

But I did want something like it. It’s burlap, natural looking and vintage-esque in a way that I just wanted very badly. Wanting to be resourceful (ok, cheap), I shopped my own house to re-create it. I have this pink ottoman that I love, but wasn’t using in any room right now. Again, being cheap, I didn’t want to make it over in a way that was permanent, but I still needed it to stand up to normal use.

So, I figured out a way to semi-permanently re-upholster it, and I’m about to show you how you can do the same. Now, if you don’t have a storage ottoman laying around, right now is the perfect time to buy one at Walmart or Target because of their dorm lines. I’ve seen similar within the past 2 weeks for about $15-$20 at both retailers.

Assuming you have an ottoman on hand, let’s go through what you’ll need to do this project.

-2 yards of natural colored, duck/drop cloth material (I got my material at Walmart for $2.97/yd)

-Pins

-Staple gun and 1/4” staples

-Scissors

-Hem tape/stitch witchery

-Iron

The first thing I did was do a dry measure to figure out my length and width to cover the bottom portion of my ottoman. My dimensions ending up being 15x60, but I made my cuts at 18x64 so I would be able to staple/hem and be able to lose some inches.

After I cut my fabric, I took one of the short ends and tried to iron a nice, straight seam using my hem tape, iron and a straight edge. It’s not 100% perfect, but remember, we want this to kinda look shabby chic.

Once you have that done, grab your pins and pin your hemmed edge in the center of the “back” of your ottoman.

Slowly start making all your nice corner folds and pin them in place. I had a pin in each corner, and this may take awhile, but you want to make sure your corners are all the same. I wish I had an exact technique on how I did mine, but it was truly trial and error with the corners. I would advise you to approach it like you’re wrapping a gift.

Once it’s all pinned, step back and make sure your corners are even and that your hems all line up all around. I wanted mine to have a skirted edge, but I had to make sure it wasn’t dragging on the ground.

So once you are committed to those corners, use your staple gun loaded with 1/4” staples to staple a corner at a time. Remove the pins after you staple, but don’t staple on them directly. My method was staple a corner, move onto the inside leading to the next corner, make sure your material stays straight, etc. Do the corner/side with your hemmed edge last. Overall, I ended up with 12 staples. Now, should I want my ottoman to be pink again, I merely need to grab my flat head screwdriver, pop off the staples and I am back in business with no noticeable damage.

Again, the last side you do should be your back/hemmed edge side. So I tucked the unfinished edge under that section so once it’s stapled it looks polished/finished, and you can’t see that frayed edge anymore.

Ta-dah!

Now we upholster the top using the same strategy.

At this point if you don’t want to add a design, you’re done. You have a chic, shabby ottoman that will look great with nearly any type of décor.

If you want to continue on with me to add a design to it, here’s what you’ll need:

-Stencil (I made mine using my Silhouette SD)

-Sharpie Fabric Marker (Black)

-Tape

-Piece of 8.5x11 cardboard

I was perusing this website for a vintage typography design, but nothing was jumping out at me. Well, let me rephrase, nothing was jumping out at me that would be easy to stencil. When creating a stencil using a die cutter machine like the Silhouette, you can’t pick anything ridiculously intricate. Don’t torture yourself. I also thought about buying iron-on transfer paper for the printer, but those have such bad reviews and I really wanted that hand-stenciled look to it.

Then my hubby walks in while I am searching and searching for stencil inspiration when he says I should add the Hogwarts crest to it.

BINGO.

I found the image I wanted, imported it into my Silhouette SD and selected the area for tracing:

Now, when importing a JPG to use as a stencil, you want to fiddle with the High Pass and Low Pass Filters over on the right until you get a nice outline using the trace function. You don’t want it to be terribly detailed. Once I got my outlines set, I then went and deleted anything I knew would be a pain in the ass for the Silhouette to cut accurately and therefore would cause me headaches while trying to stencil. As you can see above, I deleted all the text from the bottom of the crest as well as some little holes in each of the animals/mascots of the houses. I wanted to keep the overall look and integrity of the image without stressing about the itty bitty details.

I grabbed my cardstock (normal, cheap cardstock) loaded it onto the thick medium mat, screwed on the blue cap, set the speed at 1, thickness 33. Another Silhouette SD tip: if your mat has lost its stickiness, grab a glue stick (I prefer the jumbo Elmer’s type), run it across the mat a few times and you’re back in business. I have used my Silhouette SD for almost 2 years straight without ever replacing the mats because of that tip.

So, send it to your Silhouette SD to cut. It will take a LONG time. While it was cutting, I completely did my hair and make-up to go out to dinner.

After it’s done, grab your stencil, tape it onto your ottoman wherever you’d like the design, grab your Sharpie paint marker and draw away. I did lots of short strokes. Now, I recommend you put a sheet of cardboard under your material while stenciling so the fabric marker doesn’t bleed through. I forgot this step, and it didn’t bleed through and stain the pink fabric, but you never know. The Sharpie fabric markers are so easy to use and very forgiving, but if you’re nervous, practice on a spare piece of material first.

I freehanded the text on the bottom, and it was super easy. Glad I didn’t fret over including that text in the stencil.

Once you’re done, step back and admire your handiwork. Overall this project should take no more than 2 hours if you do both the reupholstering and stenciling.

I had started this project with the intention of using it as a vanity seat in the guest bathroom, but now I want to keep it in the living room to show it off!

And I bet some of you have noticed this little fella on the tray:

Well. That is my very low calorie butterbeer, and I am going to share that recipe with you in my next post.

Until then, what do you think of my Harry Potter ottoman? Does it have you thinking I waved my wand to create it?

Oh Pee Wee. Ever the sniffer of all things edible.

And let’s hope this project doesn’t get me sued.

Remember last month when I wrote about my $500 bathroom makeover plans? Well, I got started!

There are 5 ways to make sure your bathroom makeover dollars work smart and hard. Here’s what I learned while making over my guest bathroom. Over the summer we have family come over, lots of get togethers, game nights, etc. and it’s always nice to have a clean, fresh, gorgeous bathroom.

Ours was SO not that when I started on this project.

As you all can see, I removed ALL the wallpaper! YAY! Removing the wallpaper instantly brightened up the bathroom.

Here are the 5 things I felt made the most impact for little money:

1.) Paint: I painted the wall and ceiling. People forget the ceiling, but for about $60 you can give your bathroom a whole new look in a weekend.

The paint color I ended up choosing is Rainwashed by Sherwin Williams.

2.) Accent Wall: I used a stencil to create an accent wall. This is fun in this particular space because the mirror faces that wall, so it sort of feels like I stenciled 2 walls, if that makes sense.

3.) New accessories: Use what you have! A simple DIY project is taking satin ribbon + Glue Dots and adding it around vases or apothecary jars you might have on hand. Using Glue Dots makes the DIY project non-permanent so you can easily re-use accessories for the holidays, etc. Also, a decorative bag of potpourri can give your bathroom a fab smell + you can use the potpourri as vase filler like I did below. Another tip, use votive holders or even toilet/paper towel rolls to put in the center so you don’t need quite as much filler. No one will ever know!

4.) New towels: Towels can be as cheap or expensive as you’d like them to be, but nothing beats the feel of a fancy towel. We bought the white ones seen in the photos at Marshall’s for about $4-$6 a towel and they are heaven in a towel. Or if you don’t want to buy new towels, maybe check out the awesome Kleenex hand towels. They come 60 to a box, and are perfect for guest bathrooms. My sister-in-law sometimes stays over and she has a 3 year old and 1 year old…they have to wash their hands a ton! Kleenex hand towels make it easy on all of us. I don’t worry about random kiddy things on my nice towels and she can wash their hands up to 30 times a piece before I run out.

The nice thing about the Kleenex hand towels are that they easily fit on a normal towel bar.

5.) New light bulbs! Yes, new light bulbs. With the affordability of CFL’s these days, there’s no excuse not to get some that either create bright light, daylight, warm light, etc. So many options, and an easy way to bring new light to your space. Literally. These silver items always had a yellow cast to them before we switched to the CFL’s. Now it’s bright and shiny.

And bonus tip: Clean! This one is so obvious, but there’s nothing like a clean bathroom. Your fixtures will look brighter, your sink will sparkle. Such an easy fix, and if you have kids, you can bribe them to do it.

Hope those tips help you get your guest bathroom ready. Remember, the holidays are only a few months away…better start on these projects now!

I’ll be back with more photos of my bathroom makeover sometime soon. I could only get this part done in time, so I still need to revamp the other half of the bathroom which contains the shower and toilet.

What do you do to make sure your guest bathrooms are guest ready?

Join the 14 million people who have already joined the Clean Hands campaign by using Kleenex Hand Towels, and click here for savings and more!           

I was selected for participation in this campaign as a member of Clever Girls Collective.

Today I have a very handy, easy tutorial for those of you living in 1970’s ranch homes with wallpaper. I know you’re out there. We can’t be alone in choosing to buy a wood-paneled, wallpapered house because we saw potential.

Now, this tutorial can cover 2 different scenarios that happen when removing wallpaper. The first scenario is you remove wallpaper and find beautiful, intact drywall behind it. The second scenario is when you remove wallpaper and end up ripping off the top layer of drywall with it.

Guess which happened to us?

The second scenario, of course. I’ll never forget the moment we finished ripping off all the wallpaper and Daniel looks to me and says, “I think we need to replace the drywall…”

OH HELL NO.

Do you know how much work that would be? No thank you.

So, I googled around, and took some tips from a few sources to come up with this tutorial. Now, I’ve done all the steps, so I can attest to the fact that it works. It does take lots of elbow grease, but the results will add value to your home.

Supplies (now there’s an item or 2 on here that is non-negotiable…please just trust me on this!)

-Spray bottle (I like to buy mine from the travel section at Walmart for 88 cents)

-Warm water

-Downy or dish soap

-Medium grit sanding block/pad (I bought the one I used for this at Dollar Tree- 2 for $1)

-Fine grit sanding block/pad (I bought name brand 3M for this, about $4)

-Wall texture (you can use/rent/borrow a sprayer + buy texture, or buy the water based wall texture sprays cans by Homax at Lowe’s or Walmart for about $12 each)

-Joint compound (about $3 for a quart’s worth at Walmart)

-Paint roller + foam paint roller cover

-Zinsser Bulls Eye Water Based Primer (NON-NEGOTIABLE!! About $19 at Home Depot/Lowe’s/Walmart)

-Paint color of your choice

-Wallpaper scraper ($4-$7 depending on whatcha buy…I love the one below and it’s about $7)

-Trash can, tarp, etc. for disposal and floor/area protection

Total Cost: Around $100+

You start with an ugly wallpapered wall:

Step 1: In your spray bottle mix about 1 part Downy or dish soap to 4 parts water. It’s not a science. I always just did 2 pumps or squeezes of dish soap and filled my spray bottle with warm water. No biggie. Spray about 4x4 foot sections at a time and start peeling paper off. Try to get it down in big pieces/panels. If it’s being really pesky, use your wallpaper scraper.

Step 2: After you have 99% of your wallpaper removed, you’re ready to move on. Now, it’s important to try to get MOST of the wallpaper off, but do not kill yourself trying to get every bit off. It’s just not worth the effort. Let’s say that your wallpaper has been up for DECADES and rips off the top protective layer of drywall and looks like fuzzy cardboard.

You will panic. You may want to cry. You may ask yourself why you get yourself into these messes. You could have lived with the wallpaper. WHY???

I understand, and I felt that way, too.

Hugs.

Now, put on your big girl panties and let’s do this. Grab your medium grit sanding block and lightly sand the fuzzies and the uneven patches. LIGHTLY. Don’t create more work for yourself and be ferocious with it. Lightly. Almost like you’re barely skimming it.

Step 3: So once you’ve sanded your fuzzy wall into a peach fuzz like wall, you’re ready to prime your wall with Zinsser. PLEASE USE ZINSSER. I am cheap, I know you want to save a buck, but the Zinsser Bulls Eye primer is so affordable. Please buy it. I did 2 coats over my peach fuzz walls. Let it dry. Have some wine.

Step 4: Now, take your joint compound and apply to any areas that need major repair work in the drywall. We had this funky cracked portion under the light switches and the corners were all screwy, so I just used my fingers and slathered it on. It doesn’t matter if it’s goopy or lumpy because you’ll sand it baby-butt-smooth soon. Bear with me.

Step 5: Once your joint compound has dried (I usually give it 4 hours or so), lightly sand it smooth with your fine grit sandpaper. This part creates mucho dust, so you might want to wear a face mask/respirator. I didn’t because I was too lazy to walk to the garage.

Step 6: Now your walls are ready for texture. We did an orange peel texture on them…it’s a little more textured than I’d like, but it worked well to make the walls “even”. Like I mentioned earlier, you have 2 choices for texture. We have a Wagner texture sprayer that works well for us because we’re doing other drywall projects in the near future. However, if this is the only project you’ll need wall texture for, you might be better off buying a few cans of this item:

We found them at Walmart, actually, for about $12 a can for the water based texture (which is what you want). I would say a small bathroom would need 3-4 cans, so it can get pricey. Up to you as to how much or how little you want to texture your walls. I know someone will ask me if walls HAVE to be textured. Up to you. We’ve removed wallpaper in 2 areas of our home, and the walls were never in good enough shape to not texture. Use your own judgment/preference to decide what to do.

Once you apply texture, it helps to have a paper towel handy to blot down any areas that may be too lumpy/concentrated. It’s also easy to tell when it’s wet/dry. Once it’s dry, it’ll look white and blend in with your primer. Wet tends to look blue or gray depending on what kind of texture you use. I would say to be safe, let your texture dry over night.

Step 7: Prime your walls one more time using the Zinsser Bulls Eye primer. You should have plenty of primer left to do this.

Step 8: Paint your walls any color you’d like, or you could even be a total glutton for punishment and stencil like I did (and I won’t ever do that again…)

And you’re done! This can be a tedious, long process, but it isn’t really hard. It is elbow grease, patience and various steps. I’ve worked on my bathroom for about 4 weekends in a row now and only 2 of those weekends were used up on the wallpaper removal process (the other 2 were used up on stenciling).

Hope this helps! A small $100 project can add lots of value to your home while making it more modern and wallpaper free. My full reveal will be up in a few weeks- I can’t wait to show you all!

Any questions? Leave them in the comments or e-mail me.

Given that we spent a good amount of money on the dining/office makeover + our current bathroom reno, I need to keep any further updates relatively cheap. We still have a foyer, guest room, office, hallway and guest bathroom to vamp up. But, I truly think the next best room to makeover is our guest bathroom/hall bath.

Luckily, I’ve already re-stained the vanity a gorgeous espresso color, so that huge chunk of work is done. Unfortunately, there’s still oodles of work to be done, and not a lot of money to do it with.

I know $500 is sort of a lot of money in the day-to-day sense, but in the realm of bathroom makeovers, it’s almost nothing. Laughable maybe.

Let me show you what I am working with.

You walk in from the hallway, and you see the vanity/mirror/heinous bulb lighting that makes everything yellow.

Then on the left you have this wall:

Then you walk through another door to the toilet/shower area.

It all looks very, very yellow doesn’t it?

I know.

But here’s my $500 plan.

1.) Restain the oak linen cabinet to espresso and use the same hardware used on the cabinet doors of the vanity.

Cost= $10 ($3/pull + tax)

2.) Rip down all the wallpaper, apply texture, prime, paint.
Cost= $50 for paint, $30 for texture? $90 with tax.

3.) Replace all door trim/base boards + add a small backsplash accent.

Cost= $125 with tax

4.) Replace lighting.

Cost= $100 for both fixtures

5.) Replace mirror.

Cost= free! We’re going to use the free mirror that comes with the vanity from the other bathroom reno.

6.) Add accessories (rugs, towels, storage, curtain/blinds). I already have some bathroom accessories (towel bars, robe hooks, glass shelves) I bought years ago from Target (on clearance for DIRT cheap) in anticipation of having a house someday. I finally get to use them!

Cost= $50 max. Must use what I have or revamp!

7.) New shower curtain + curved shower rod.

Cost= $50

8.) New door knobs/doors/hinges.

Cost= $100

Total= $525 (I’ll hopefully make up the $25 overage somewhere…)

Basically, I am going to have to use a lot of what I may already have, but repurpose or upscale it a bit. Creativity is key to success in this challenge. And savvy shopping.

I’d love to replace the fan, but I think cost is going to be an issue because we’d need an electrician. The current fan/heater doesn’t actually vent into the attic, so that’s not something we want to DIY. Definitely something I’d love to do down the line. Maybe I can spray paint the current one with some high temp spray paint? I need to do some research on that.

You may be wondering what I want it all to look like. Well. Not gray. I am trying my damndest to not use gray. I always go to gray, and I am beginning to think I am one of those people who is afraid of color. Given that it’s a small, narrow space, I am leaning towards earthy, but bold colors. Sort of like you were in a fancy, boutique hotel. Like a Kimpton one.

I googled around for some color palette generators, and I fell in love with Kuler.

Here are some color palettes that piqued my interest:

1.-

2.-

3.-

4.-

5.-

6.-

Which color palette do you all like? I love the bright, bold ones, but don’t know if they’ll overwhelm a small, narrow space. And yes, some of the palettes have gray.

I simply couldn’t resist.

The tile in the shower is mustard yellow, the floor is a neutral stone looking faux-tile, so really I have a pretty neutral room once I take down all the Parisian wallpaper.

Ideas? Thoughts? Anything I haven’t thought of? I know I absolutely refuse to work on this bathroom until the other bathroom is done.

That means I have a few months or so.

Will this madness ever end?