Bad Reality Checks

Recently my recall has been one or two dreams a night. Recently in some of my dreams I either have been a tiny tiny bit aware, or my brain is just messing with me. I think this because I always think of reality checks, such as the nose plug, but don't do them. I'll lift my hands or think about reality checking in the dreams but it never happens. My dreams aren't extremely vivid and when going back in my memory some of them just seem like a group of pictures with thoughts associated with them so I can see why reality checking may not even be possible some of my dreams if I don't feel I have a body, but explaining this is tough so I'm just going to leave it as it is. How can I get reality checks to actually carry over to my dream, sometimes the thought of them comes up un-associated with the idea that I may be dreaming, which has not happened lately.