Celebrate summer – indoors and out – with these five super-stylish decor projects. The best part? They combine kid-friendly, do-it-yourself projects with mom-and-dad-pleasing designer élan. (Sure, macaroni necklaces are part of your family lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean your whole life has to be art-directed by a preschooler!) So, don’t park the kids in front of the TV while you fluff your home for the warm-weather months — tell ’em to roll up their sleeves and give you a hand with these projects.

Refresh an Outdoor Space with a Garden Obelisk

Give an outdoor room, patio, or porch a sophisticated architectural element with a metal obelisk set in a modern planter. Your kids can even help set it up. Here’s how.

First select a planter. If the pot doesn’t have drainage holes at the bottom, get your kids to pour in a few inches of gravel (or use river rocks) instead; if it does have drainage holes, put a larger stone over each hole to keep soil from spilling out.

Next, have a child pour in potting soil, stopping about two or three inches shy of the planter’s top. Help your junior gardeners transplant five seedlings of the same species to the planter. Good choices include climbing nasturtium, morning glory, ivy, or, for added fun, attractive climbing veggies like peas or beans. (Be sure to check out our gardening tips for kids.)

Start by planting a couple specimens in the center of the planter. Drop the obelisk into the planter over the plants, and then add four more seedlings, one at each corner of the obelisk. (You could also create a rudimentary obelisk by inserting a willow branch in each corner of the planter, then bending the tops together and tying with jute.) Put the kids in charge of watering the planter and, in the case of flowering plants, they can commandeer the deadheading, too.

You can purchase obelisks at any home and garden store.

For other project ideas, check out our home section.

Photo courtesy of Pottery Barn.