Fix Worn Furniture Spots

The table in the living room gets a lot of traffic from people's feet and shoes as a footrest while sitting on the couch. After a while, the stain begins to wear off and it doesn't look so nice. So how do you fix this problem? Go to Home Depot, Lowe's or your local hardware store and get a stain pen in the color closest to the stain on your furniture. This is the one I bought:

The color is Red Oak

Before:

After:

It's not 100%, but it looks MUCH better! You can keep layering on the stain if you want it darker in color.

All you do is take your stain pen to the spot where the stain has worn off.

Let the stain sit there for a few minutes and remove the excess stain with a paper towel.

Keep applying several coats of stain to get to your desired color.

The front of the table was much worse, but I forgot the before picture. He is the after picture!

Much better.

How to Keep Your Home-baked Cookies Soft

I don't know about you, but I love soft cookies! I hate when you bake cookies at home and they are delicious right out of the oven, but the next day they are hard and crumbly. My roommate in college actually taught me this trick on keeping your cookies soft for days after you've baked them!

You can use any cookie dough, but I am home for Christmas break from school and my mom bought this Triple Chocolate Chunk tub of cookie dough from a lady at her work whose son was selling Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough for a fundraiser. Three dozen cookies in one tub and they are "place-and-bake" ready! You can find more about the Otis Spunkmeyer fundraising and cookie dough here.

Follow the directions on the package as to what temperate and time to bake the cookies at. Make sure the cookies are done, but not too much. You don't want them to come out of the oven as hockey pucks, but you don't want them raw and greasy either.

After taking the cookies out of the oven, use a spatula to remove the cookies from the baking sheet. Place the cookies on waxed paper. Allow the cookies to cool on the waxed paper for about 5 or so minutes. You want the cookies to still be slightly warm, but not hot.

Find an air-tight tupperware container that will be large enough for your batch of cookies. Place enough cookies on the bottom layer to fill the bottom of the container. Cut pieces of waxed paper that are the same size as the container to lay in-between each layer of cookies.

Layer the cookies and sheets of waxed paper until all of your cookies are in your container. Close the container and let them sit in the container for a few hours. The steam from the cookies being warm will "lock" inside the cookies and keep them soft! (You can sneak a few cookies during the process. I know they are hard to resist!)

Enjoy! : ]

Pesky Pimple?

Ok, so this is a not-so-flattering topic, but everyone deals with it. I usually don't have too many major problems with acne, but just as anyone else, I get a big "problem" from time to time and I want to get rid of it ASAP! I have seen posts on Pinterest about putting toothpaste on pimples, but I had never tried it before. This link talks more about toothpaste pimple cures and other remedies that claim to help get rid of your pesky pimples. I also read this post and it made the whole toothpaste thing sound like a terrible idea.

I'm sure a lot of other people have their own ways to get rid of their pimples fast, but I thought i'd share mine. Chapstick! That's right. For years I have used Softlips chapstick to put on my pesky pimples to heal them fast. I'm not sure why it works for me, but it does! I have found that the pimples I put chapstick on heal faster than those I don't put chapstick on. Weird, I know!

This remedy may not work for everyone, but it seems to work for me. I suppose it works because of the  moisturizing effect. I put the Softlips chapstick on at night rubbing in into my acne spot 2-3 times. I wash my face in the morning with facial scrub and repeat the next few days till it is all healed up! I have only used Softlips chapstick for this remedy. It is not a miracle acne healer, but I feel that it does speed up the healing process. It couldn't hurt to try, right? Also, I researched the ingredients in Softlips and it said some people may have an allergy to one of the ingredients. As a person with lots of allergies, I know it's important to be careful, so check over the list of ingredients before use.

This is the "coconut cream" scent, but it doesn't matter for this purpose. I have used them all.

A Quick Fix

Have you ever had a purse or a belt that has one of those metal bars with a metal tubing around it? It looks like this....

I bought a purse the other day (for $12 at Ross, mind you!) and it had one of those noisy metal tubing things around the decorative buckle. I have had the annoyance of owning a few belts in the past with this same problem. For belts, It gets annoying because it always spins and sometimes makes the latch come undone. For the buckle on my purse, it was extremely annoying! It jingled every step I took.

I have had a quick fix for this problem in the past and I used the same solution on the buckles on my new purse as well. My fix...super glue! It is that simple.

I started off my figuring out where I wanted to put my dabs of super glue. I decided the underside of the bar would be the best so you wouldn't see it. (even though you shouldn't really see it either way)

I then pushed the tubing over to one side as far as I could and placed a dab of glue onto the bottom of the bar. I did the same thing to the other side. Be sure not to put the metal tubing onto the glue on the bar.

Then, when you are done putting your dabs of glue on. Push the bottom of the tubing up onto the bar with the glue. Hold it there for a few seconds to insure a hold.

Finished product!

Let the glue dry for a few hours and you are good to go. problem solved! No more noisy and/or spinning buckles!

Also, view more on my outfit in this post.