It's time to pack up those pool accessories and face the facts -- cooler weather is here to stay, whether we like it or not. Still, you can have a bit of a last hurrah with those old pool noodles you've got scattered around your back patio. Why not transform your average noodle into a fabulously unique chair with this tutorial from Instructables?

One tip from our expert designer? "The chair's joints are cast aluminum, made using the lost styrofoam process. I know most people don't have access to a foundry, and getting custom work cast is expensive. However, the joints could just as easily be made out of wood, hopefully something that provides a nice contrast to the plywood"

In other words, get creative with a few inexpensive and crafty materials to keep the bill low and the work unique. Sometimes having a budget is the best way to ensure you have a one-of-a-kind piece!

Happy crafting!

Plastic bags may not be friendly to the environment, but when recycled, they can be the earth's best friend. Even better? Plastic bags can add a touch of chic glamour to every home they grace. Don't believe your grocery bag and "chic" belong in the same sentence? Think again:

1. The Plastic Bag Chandelier
I always hear that you can make a lamp out of absolutely anything, but I have to admit -- I never believed it. Until now.
See the first chandelier here, and the second right here.

2. The Plastic Bag Chair
Sit on it and spin... literally. The plastic bag chair from Ryan Frank may not be the most functional, but it's certainly the most beautiful.

3. The Plastic Bag Cushions
Cushions that are both lovely and earth-friendly! See them right here.

4. The Plastic Bag Shoes
Don't even think about leaving out your tootsies. Plastic bag shoes? You betcha!

5. The Plastic Bag Containers
Crochet your way to recycled containers right here. Amazing!

In my humble opinion, upholstered furniture looks better without the anchoring wall of fabric known as the skirt. More often than not, skirts are cut and hemmed too short anyway. Unless the legs are downright hideous, their presence adds an element which becomes a part of the overall design, rather than something attached to it.

Complete removal of a skirt can get tricky, but ReadyMade happened across a chair update project on The Brick House blog that opens up all sorts of vintage chair possibilities.

The blogger transformed this unimpressive gold 1970s chair into a retro gem by altering the skirt in order to show off those modern legs. Find out more after the break.

Nothing perturbs me more than sitting in a chair and wobbling back and forth because the chair legs need fixing. I get perturbed because once again I spent my money on something cheap, or someone else did, and they just like to be annoying by rocking back and forth.

Over at the Indianapolis Star, our own extremely talented Shelly Leer learned how to fix annoying chair wobbles when a furniture builder showed her how to apply wood glue to the chair using a turkey basting syringe. Genius!

There's a little more to it: please join me after the break to learn how it's done.

My husband and I have a habit of picking up furniture and other stuff that ends up at the end of someone's driveway. What one person thinks of as trash, we happen to think it is an ugly treasure that can easily be converted into something useful and beautiful.

Salvaging is just as nice as shopping at the thrift store, except it is free, since someone put it out for the trash. Over on Craftster, Sharon S. made a bench built for two from two beat up chairs and a headboard she managed to salvage. She cut the rickety chairs apart and used them for each end of the bench. The back of the bench is the headboard.

Although she doesn't really have any instructions on how to make the chair bench, or what hardware she used, Sharon's project is genius and a perfect way to salvage old chairs and a headboard that otherwise might be adding to an already clogged landfill.

Summer is my favorite time of the year, not only for the warm weather and outdoor food, but for the endless garage sales and flea markets. I sure do enjoy looking for an unbeatable bargain. Usually, I can find something to drag home that is in desperate need of a makeover, and is fairly cheap.

Kathy Peterson enjoys flea markets too, especially the World's Longest Yard Sale, which is hosted by several states. She managed to find a really ugly chair that was dirty and in dire need of a coat of paint and some new fabric, so she took it home and gave the chair a royal makeover.

To freshen up the chair, she removed the pad and batting, cleaned and painted the chair, and then stapled on some of her favorite fabric. When she was done, she attached fabric with hot glue to cover any exposed staples. The chair was then ready to be used for her daughter-in-law's bridal shower.

For more great chair makeover ideas, check out M.E. Williams' post on giving a new life to a thrift store chair, and my previous post on making over your boring office chair.

Organic furniture is all the rage. Tree stump benches and natural outdoor spaces fill the pages of the most popular home decorating magazines.

How far would you take this? Consider building an outdoor seating area complete with a grass arm-chair and couch. Styleo points us to a tutorial in the print version of Ready Made magazine, which outlines the steps. Working together with nature to create these inspired pieces of organic furniture is the perfect way to reunite your green thumb with your inner diva.

Basically, you pot soil into a chair frame, then plant the grass seed. After about 10 days, the grass will start to grow. When it reaches about 10cm long, you're ready to cut it down and reveal the chair design. You'll have to maintain it regularly if you want to avoid sitting in an overgrown mess. Remember, with all the maintenance, consider using a non-pollutant mower, and minimize your water usage.

There has been a comment that the tutorial is not easy to follow. I think this basic concept would lend itself to any number of design modification, so use it as inspiration, and see where it takes you.

Sleek, stylish, and environmentally progressive, you will definitely be the talk of the town (either as "Check out their cool lawn couch!" or "Who is that nut down the road with a chair made out of grass?").

Want colorful flowers this spring? No time to read that 500-page gardening book you got for Christmas? Well, time-pressed gardener, here's how to grow masses of beautiful pansies in 10 easy steps.

1. Know your zone. Is now a good time to plant? The answer depends upon your zone. Check the USDA's plant hardiness map. Pansies are grown as annuals in zones 2 to 11 (i.e. most of the US) during spring and fall. From zone 9 south to zone 11 (south Texas and most of Florida), they will grow right through winter. North of zone 9, they may die down during winter, but come back in Spring. Further north, the cold will kill them stone dead. Bottom line: if the weather is warming up for Spring and you don't expect any really hot weather anytime soon, you're probably good to go.

2. Buy smart. Don't be sucked in by the brightest blooms. Instead, buy dense, sturdy-looking plants with lots of healthy, green leaves and buds. These will give you more blooms in the long run once they get established. Another buying tip: it's better value to buy whole trays of baby pansies rather than pint-sized pots of mature ones. Be patient and those tiny plants will soon grow to full size.

While I was working on another post, this double-desk project, a workspace for two, caught my eye. A bookshelf with file baskets hung on its side separates two desk surfaces. The overall effect is like those library study carrel tables that you may have used in high school or college. You can download the instructions for the Two's Company desks at DIY Ideas.

Not much is ever really new. If you like this project, check out Christopher Lowell's wonderful book Seven Layers of Organization, which has several similar desks built with bookshelves and doors. (Why a door? Because they're commonly available, usually pretty inexpensive, and the hole for the doorknob is perfect for wrangling the cords and wires that proliferate at the back of most desks.)

The May/June 2007 issue of Blueprint also had a pair of desks which were placed back-to-back, as these were, but with a sheet of colored Plexiglas between them. This set-up is perfect for a shared home office, or for siblings who have to share a bedroom. If you'd prefer to use the Plexiglas, it shouldn't cost too much more than a sturdy bookshelf. It should be the same width as both desks, 28" or so taller than the desks' writing surface, and should be 1/4" thick with polished edges.

Clicking through the other ideas in the DIY Ideas: Get To Work gallery, you will see an artist's studio that uses shelving with standards/anchors and brackets, as well as hanging shoe bags. There's also a basic desk whose top has been livened up with rectangles of peel-and-stick vinyl floor tile, and some ideas to make your home office more relaxing.

[via Apartment Therapy]

Looking for a loooong-term gardening project? Are you the patient sort? Check out this plan for growing a living garden chair using the technique known as arborsculpture. According to arborsculpture enthusiast (and author of a self-published book on the topic), Richard Reames, creating a work of arborsculpture may take years, however, "the truth is time is an illusion and the sooner one starts the sooner one will have a substantially large tree. Do children grow up fast? How fast has the last 10 years of your life gone by? You see it is all relative isn't it?"

Don't plan on moving anytime soon? Give the garden chair arborsculpture a try. Apart from the initial investment in the trees, there isn't a lot of equipment required. Start with ten long, thin, branchless tree saplings. The saplings should be around six to eight-feet tall. Next, get yourself two five-foot and three four-foot cold rolled, one-half-inch diameter metal bars. Follow these instructions on how to plant, then bend and twine the saplings together and gradually force them into the shape of a chair. The finished chair is perfectly functional -- you can sit in it just as you would a regular garden chair.

Personally, I'm a bit dubious of the whole concept. Somehow, the words "tree torture" spring to mind when I consider it. On the other hand, Reames is motivated in his work by his love for trees and their role in protecting the environment. Then there's the artistic value -- talk about a novel landscaping accent!

Are you tired of the way your office chair looks just because it's drab, boring, and down right ugly? If you're doing any work at all, then you wouldn't really care, I suppose. Your mind should be focused on what you're doing, and not what you have your butt planted on. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

If you are as disgruntled as I am about the look of your office chair, especially if it's out in the view of the public, or not entirely private, then meander over to Design Sponge and check out their office chair upgrade article. With some fabric, scissors, staple gun, a screwdriver, and an Allen wrench, you can turn your drab, boring chair into something that your bum will be happy to be planted upon.

Now, all I need to do is convince my husband to let me do this awesome craft project, since he doesn't care where he plants his bum or what our office chair looks like. I do, though, and I really hate to look at beat up old ugly leather. I am going to do this project even if it means taking the chair out from under his butt on a Saturday afternoon.

There is nothing sweeter than settling into an ergonomic office chair. You've tried the fancy ones in the store, but how many of us are really going to shell out $600 for a top of the line Aeron. Jon Aquino is certainly not. He's hacked together a wonderfully geeky and apparently comfortable chair for his home office. He used things you'd have around the house anyway, making the cost virtually nothing.

All you need is a regular chair, a telephone book, a cutting board, a towel, and a bungee cord (or belt). Check out Jon's post here for assembly instructions. It's really simple and the height along with the lower back support are adjustable. Just look at his posture in this picture. He's saving himself a lot of back pain and probably getting more work done as a result.

Some commenters wonder if sitting on a phone book would be comfortable. I imagine you could put something over top or use a firm cushion instead.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Cost Plus Wold Market announced the recall of Bistro chairs for a collapsing hazard. These chairs are metal and came in several colors, red, blue, white and green.

The chairs can collapse due to faulty rivets. Cost Plus has received several reports of the chairs collapsing and one report of a minor injury. The chairs were sold from January 2007 to June 2007 and were manufactured in Taiwan.

If you have one of the recalled chairs you simply need to return them to the store where you purchased them for a full refund.For more information please see the upsc press release or contact Cost Plus Inc. toll-free at 1-877-967-5362 between 7 a.m. and 12 midnight ET, or visit their web site.