Even though you would love to get away and spend a day at the spa, sometimes you can’t. That’s when you have to stop and set aside some time for you. The next best thing you can do for yourself is create your own spa at home. Stopping and taking a day and giving yourself a spa treatment will make you feel like a new person.

If you’re as busy and stressed as most of us, you may not take time out for self care very often. However, personal pampering has many stress relieving benefits, and should be incorporated as part of a low stress lifestyle. If you don’t have the budget for a high end spa, you can create a relaxing home spa experience for yourself. The following are some basic elements to include in creating a home spa experience that will melt away stress and leave you feeling pampered and relaxed.

Shouldn’t there be one day set aside just for you? You can give yourself a day of pampering by creating your own spa day at home.

1. Block off a specific amount of time for yourself. Sometimes busy people have a hard time just doing nothing because we can think of so many other things that need doing. If this break is scheduled to be a specific length, you may feel more entitled to just enjoy it.

2. Try to do this on a regular schedule, like once a week or twice a month. With repetition, you may see your spa time making a significant impact on your overall stress level!

3. Don’t feel guilty for taking some time for yourself—you deserve it!

Find a sitter for the kids and arrange it so they’re away from home for the day. Plan your spa day in advance and gather up all the ingredients you need ahead of time.

1. Privacy: Perhaps the most important part of the home spa experience is being sure you have some uninterrupted time for just you. If you have to hop out of the tub to circumvent a catastrophe with your toddler or answer a string of calls, you may end up feeling even more tense! So make arrangements for some uninterrupted solitude, let the phone go to voice mail, and prepare to indulge.

2. Music: If you can arrange to have music in your bathroom, you’ll be glad you did. The right soothing melodies can help melt away the stress, make you feel more removed from reality, and, if you live with others, drown out the household sounds that may remind you of everything else going on, taking your attention away from the here and now of your home spa experience.

3. Lighting: You’d be surprised at how lighting can create a stress-relieving mood. Lighting the room with candles can fill the area with a soothing scent and create a very relaxing atmosphere.

4. Bath Products: You can go a long way in creating a luxurious bath with a few helpful products. Lavender-scented bubble bath, for example, uses the power of aromatherapy to soothe you. Body scrubs are used in spas to exfoliate skin, and can be used at home as well. There are also skin-moisturizing oils you can add to your bath to nourish your skin and make the pampered feeling last.

5. Beauty Treatments: While you’re relaxing, you may as well get more beautiful! Putting a conditioning treatment in your hair and a purifying masque on your face can make your face and scalp feel good and leave you looking more beautiful afterward. Rubbing your dry skin with a loofah and scrubbing calloused feet with a pumice stone can be a little more work, but you’ll love the results, and it’ll only take a few minutes.

6. After Tub Care: You may want to follow up after you get out of the tub by applying a rich conditioning cream to your skin and a coat of nail polish to your toes. Again this will keep you feeling more pampered between spa treatments.

7. Massage: You may think a home spa treatment can’t include a massage, but it can! If you can’t enlist the soothing hands of a partner, you can use a self-massager to do the same job: loosen up tight muscles, promote circulation, and make you feel great. Or, if you’re really in the mood to indulge, you can even hire a professional massage therapist to come to your house!

Going to a spa is a wonderful and rejuvenating experience. You may not be able to go to a professional spa as often as you like. You can experience the benefits relaxing spa treatments in the privacy of your own home.

Following are some simple spa treatments you can easily treat yourself to at home. The treatments are simple. If you want a more spa like experience, set up some of the supplies that are listed. You don't need a lot of supplies to make a relaxing spa treatment, in fact the simpler you keep the routine, the more likely you will be to treat yourself often:

Try a cleansing facial.

You can give yourself a wonderful cleansing facial at home. Start by running a basin full of hot water, which will create billows of warm steam. Next, lean over the basin, covering your head and the basin with a towel to enclose the steam.

Soak in a hot bath

Baths give you a wonderful, relaxing time out. To maximize the benefits of a hot, relaxing soak, make sure that you allow yourself at least fifteen to twenty minutes in the tub.

Hand soak

Prepare a hand water soak with warm water and a few drops of rose water or a few drops of lemon or lime juice. Listen to your favorite music and have a cup of herbal tea handy.

Nail oil treatments

Apply nutritive oil on your hands. You may use almond oil, apricot oil, Castor oil, nut oil. If available, add a few drops of vitamin E. Message in the cuticles and leave it on your hands.

Body Lotion or oil

After your relaxing bath, slather your favorite body lotion or oil all over your body. Wrap yourself in a sheet and relax while it soaks in.

Tips to stage your home spa

Spa Bowls

Any quarts sized plastic or glass bowl to hold water and spa ingredients.

Cotton Pads and swabs

For application and removal of just about any product.

Scrubs and Masks

You can purchase scrubs and masks, or make your own with natural ingredients.

Spa Thermal Unit

Use a miniature cooler to store hot towels. Immerse the towels in steaming hot water, wring them out and store them in the cooler, where they will remain hot for 10 to 15 minutes.

Skin brush or loofah

Use a dry skin brush or loofah to ex foliate.

Towels

Have plenty of drying towels on hand.

Wrapping sheets

Use a sheet to help the process of purifying herbs, creams or oils, as well as to protect furniture and other surfaces.

Use sheets to wrap yourself in to stay warm.

Robes

A luxurious cotton terrycloth robe and slippers hanging nearby to wrap yourself in after your spa treatment is a pampering treat.

Bath salts

There are several excellent bath salts on the market. For a simple at home treatment, plain Epsom salts are great for the skin and are an inexpensive, relaxing soak.

Additional Tips

Candles and music help to set a peaceful, relaxing mood.

Try to schedule your spa day for when you can have peace and privacy.

Have a bottle of water or cup of tea nearby so you don't get dehydrated, especially in hot water.

You can enjoy your at spa treatments in any combination that you want. Take one suggestion, or all of them. Treat yourself well as you relax and rejuvenate.

I only do my at home spa treatments once a month but I look forward to it and plan accordingly. Its the one day when I do nothing but pamper myself.

I used a picnic basket similiar to the one to the right to hold everything.

Pick up any supplies needed for the day.

Hair color, lotions, potions

Bubble bath, candles. Nail polish.

Music.

Schedule haircut first thing in the morning.

1. Color hair. I hate this chore but I do it myself to save money. Wrap head in plastic shopping bag to prevent drips.

2. Wash face & Put on facial mask.

3. Put on teeth whitener.

4. Nice bubble bath. Soak while all the chemicals do their work.

5. Pedicure in the tub. Scrub feet & trim toe nails. Easier to cut when soaked.

6. Wash off mask.

7. Rinse out hair color.

8. Blow dry and style hair.

9. Apply makeup. Inventory supplies.

10. Lubricate skin with lotion.

11. File & paint nails.

12. Go shopping for new outfit or go to the movies or out to dinner.

Expert village has an excellent series of 140 at home spa treatment videos on youtube. Embedding has been disabled or I would have included them here.

Topics covered

• Making skin care treatments
• How to give a Pedicure at home
• Facial Masks
• Hair removal
• Body waxing
• Foot care tips
• Moisturizers and dry skin
• What is a full-line facial
• How to do a home manicure
• How to give a salt glow skin treatment
• Facial scrubs for dry skin
• How to make home made facial

Expert Village channel