20 Low-Cost ways to Upgrade Your Bathroom

1. Old wooden crates make smart holders for extra toilet paper and rolled bath towels.



2. Turn an unused nightstand into storage for small towels, makeup, hair tools, and toiletries.



3. A sink skirt hides a multitude of sins. You can easily make a no-sew one from a pretty bedsheet.



4. When your tub lacks wide ledges where you can stow your bath products, hang a multilevel fruit basket for additional space.



5. A shelf rack with hooks is an ingenious answer to the storage problem posed by smaller spaces.



6. Separate cosmetics by category―lip colors, shadows, blushes, etc.―and store them in small drawer organizers that you can easily rearrange.



7. Make a long soak even more luxurious with bath salts, lush towels, and aromatic candles within easy reach.



8. Think of an unused sugar bowl as a decorative container, perfect for cotton balls and Q-tips.



9. Something as simple as an over-the-tub wire rack devoted to bathing goods adds a nice touch (and extra convenience).



10. It is possible to keep toiletries looking neat on a bathroom countertop, with the aid of odds and ends like unused, mismatched serving pieces.



11. A woven basket holds an ample supply of toilet paper, eliminating the need to hunt when you’re down to the end of a roll (your guests will thank you).



12. Another approach: Repurpose a tall cylindrical vase for the job.



13. A retractable mirror is a practical solution on walls that won’t allow for a conventional mirror.



14. Bedroom, yes. Living room, of course. But a bouquet of flowers in a bathroom feels especially unexpected. Even a small vase of yard-cut greens adds freshness to the room.



15. A perfumed tablet of preserved cranberries and orange slices adds a delicious note when slipped into a vanity drawer.



16. A calming color on the walls―like this rich blue-green―gives the room a sense of tranquillity.



17. One lower-cost solution to old bathroom tiles: Blunt the behind-the-times feeling by painting the walls a complimentary color for a cheerful scheme.



18 .One attractive option for window treatments is faux-wooden blinds, which offer all the elegance of real wood and none of the worries of water damage or warping.



19. Or let the sun stream into your bath through an oversized picture window―especially one that showcases a gorgeous view.



20. Towel bars have been replaced by hooks next to the shower, eliminating the need for folding and just-so draping. An extra hook installed below gives the bath mat a place to dry.


Upgrade, Decorating, Cleaning, Home & Organizing, Low-Cost

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How to Get great summer legs

Get ready for summer: Follow our advice and you won't be afraid to show off your legs

TONE UP

It's no wonder the likes of Madonna and Claudia Schiffer are hooked on the Power Plate.

Just 15 minutes on this vibrating platform doing a series of exercises gives the body a high-speed workout as your muscles contract and relax up to 50 times a second with the vibrations.

This is equivalent to an hour-long workout in the gym.

Its makers have joined forces with Thalgo to create a series of cellulite-busting exercises to be used in conjunction with its Slim & Sclupt Expert Cellu-Thighs (£43.45, Boots nationwide; for your nearest Powerplate, tel: 0844 871 8157).

CREAMS OF THE CROP

Elle Macpcpherson, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell all swear by Rodial's Bum Lift (£100, spacenk.co.uk).

Packed full of wheat protein and vegetable collagen, when massaged into the thighs and bottom this gel 'lifts, firms, smoothes and tones', with women reporting a 3.8cm reduction in the width of the thighs and buttocks, and stretch marks reduced by 60 per cent.

Cameron Diaz's cellulite- busting weapon is Adonia Legtone (£53, adonialegtone.com), a serum that claims an average reduction of 47 per cent in cellulite within just nine minutes of application.

Alternatively, there's the pain-free, non-surgical salon treatment VelaShape, in which bi-polar radio-frequency and infrared light energy are combined with a vacuum-like massage for visible inch loss.(Harvey Nichols Beyond Medispa spas nationwide, six treatments start from £1,000. Or visit velashape.com.)

BRUSH-UP

One of the best ways to reduce cellulite is also one of the cheapest: body brushing.

A lways brush upwards in firm strokes towards the heart for a couple of minutes before getting into the shower. Do this daily for six weeks to get results.

Try the Body Shop Round Body Brush (£7, 01903 844 554) or the long-handled Elemis Skin Brush (£18, time tospa.co.uk).

DE-FLUFF

Home hair removal kits have come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Veet's can be used in the shower or dry, and start from just £3.

Bliss has launched the Poetic Waxing Kit (£17.13) a low temperature waxing treatment that grabs hairs as short as 1mm and keep you fuzz-free for a month. Both from Boots.

FAKE TAN

If you're having a professional tan, they can customise it to slim your thighs or ankles with shading.

But home tans can be just as good. Fake Bake has just launched The Feel Good Tan (£24.95, fakebake.co.uk) using Vitamin D to ensure a natural glow and the feel-good factor of the sunshine vitamin.
great summer legs, great legs, How to

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Treatment of the week: The facial for the back

Dare to bare your back: The treatment cleanses and tones the parts of the skin you can't reach

The Oscars, the Brits, the Golden Globes, the Baftas . . . All those high glamour awards ceremonies seem like an eternity ago.

But if there's one fashion legacy they've left behind it's that bare shoulders and backs are big news for summer.

And apparently there's more to getting ready to bare your back than just giving it a vigorous going over with the loofah in the bath.

A new treatment at the celebrity beauty salon Hari's claims to be a 'facial for the back'.

It concentrates on cleansing and toning the parts you can't reach. It begins with a cream cleanse - as a normal face treatment would - followed by an exfoliation.

After the product is removed with hot towels, it's time for a firm massage before the next step - a good old-fashioned steam to open the pores before a purifying mask is applied and left to dry.
Lastly, as in a traditional facial, toner and moisturiser is applied. Then you are all set.

My therapist tells me this treatment is often used by people who suffer with 'back-ne' (a spotty back), but is becoming increasingly popular wit h those who just want to ensure their shoulders are ship shape before baring them to the world in the sunshine.

If you are a regular spray tanner, it is worth checking in for this treatment to eliminate any patchiness on the parts of the back you can't reach.

Once at home, I checked out my rear view in the mirror. My shoulders and back looked pretty good.
Now all I need is that sold out strapless Tommy Hilfiger number I've been coveting to show them off.
facial Treatment, facial Treatment back

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Botox backlash: Evidence reveals the so called 'miracle jab' may actually GIVE you wrinkles

Miracle cure? Botox injections could create new lines

Over the past 15 years, Botox has been embraced by thousands of women - and men.

The market in the forehead freezing drug is worth almost £18 million in the UK alone.

But one of its least-known, and most deliciously ironic, side-effects is that if you use it a lot, or have it injected by an inexperienced practitioner, Botox can actually give you wrinkles.

Cosmetic experts have noted that knocking out some of the facial muscles can bring others into play.

In a piece for the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology in 2002, Dr David Becker, an assistant professor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, observed that 'wrinkles caused by untreated muscles of facial expression paradoxically can become more prominent'.

'Paralysis of a set of muscles,' he suggests, 'might lead to recruitment of other muscle groups in an attempt to reproduce the conditioned activity being blocked - resulting in more prominent muscle activity in adjacent regions.'

In other words, your face will still find a way to make expressions by using different areas than where you've had Botox, leading to more lines.

The main place where these wrinkles appear is across the bridge of the nose. These 'bunny lines', as they have been christened (twitch your nose like a rabbit, and you'll get them, too), have been seized on with glee as one more clue to guess which celebrity has been Botoxed.

You may have seen them on the faces of Dannii Minogue and Amanda Holden. These beauties have lovely smooth foreheads . . . and peculiar little wrinkles across the nose which pop up when they smile.

Bunny lines: Amanda Holden, and Kylie Minogue show the signs of Botox through wrinkles across the bridge of their

Some people have them naturally, but increasingly, bunny lines are being seen as a dead giveaway that the person in question has submitted to the needle.

Leading cosmetic dermatologist Dr Nick Lowe, of the Cranley Clinic in London, says: 'If you inject the forehead with Botox, the muscles at the sides of the nose and on the lower bridge of the nose often act a bit more strongly, just because the adjacent muscles have been reduced in strength by the injections. That's why you get bunny lines.

'You could always pre-empt the problem by getting your nose Botoxed, too.

'I routinely inject the nose,' says Dr Lowe, 'particularly if I'm injecting around the eyes to soften crows' feet. If you inject crows' feet and leave the bunny lines, the muscles that cause the bunny lines can also increase the under-eye lines.'

Generally, botulinum toxin type-A wrinkle- relaxers are considered very safe. Originally used to treat debilitating neurological diseases such as post-stroke spasticity, blepharospasm and foot spasticity assocciated with cerebral palsy, Botox is classed as a prescription drug.

When used for cosmetic purposes, it's in far smaller quantities. Side-effects such as lowering brows and drooping eyelids are rare, but in smaller ways Botox can distort a face, making it look not quite right; a bit 'off', somehow.

This distortion becomes clearer when we see faces that remain immobile as their owner's voice goes through a whole range of emotions, but even when Botoxed faces are at rest they can look faintly peculiar.

Five years ago, this look might have puzzled most of us. But now we know what it is, Botox has become something of a joke and has become less acceptable.

'As we age, we should still want to look like ourselves,' says make-up guru Bobbi Brown.

Her campaign, Pretty Powerful, is all about showing how much we can improve our faces with a dab of concealer and a dash of lip gloss, and makes a point of featuring real, un-Botoxed women.

'Botox is a poison,' she says: when we are so careful about what we put into our bodies, why do we want someone to shoot poison into our faces?

'I tried Botox once, a couple of years ago, between my eyebrows. I didn't like it. I looked unnatural. Going down this route is a bit like weeding your garden. When do you stop? A face without lines lacks warmth and personality.'

So are we likely to start seeing a rash of new wrinkles in publicity photographs and on TV? Who knows?

In an ideal world, such minor signs of ageing might just become fashionable - the mark of a genuine, as opposed to Botoxed-and-airbrushed, type of beauty. We can but hope.

Botox backlash, botox side effects

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Which Celebrity Hairstyle Is Hottest

This year at the Cannes Film Festival, several A-list stunners sported gorgeous gowns and glowing faces and, here's a twist, two distinctly different hairstyles -- one night they wore updos, the next, they wore hair down.

Which do you prefer? Think some of them should've stuck with the updos? Or do you like their hair better long and loose?

Evangeline Lilly



Salma Hayek



Diane Lane



Eva Longoria Parker



Kate Beckinsale



Our votes: A, B, B, A, A


Cannes Film Festival 2010, Evangeline Lilly hairstyle, Salma Hayek hairstyle, Diane Lane hairstyle, Eva Longoria Parker hairstyle, Kate Beckinsale hairstyle, 2010

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