put lipstick on a pig vs spice up

put lipstick on a pig

verb
  • To superficially alter something in the hope of making it seem more appealing than it is in actuality. 

spice up

verb
  • To make more exotic, fun or extravagant. 

  • To enhance the flavor of something by adding spice to it. 

How often have the words put lipstick on a pig and spice up occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )