Dining Patio Sets

1. With a quality patio furniture set and a lively imagination, you can travel anywhere on a budget and a whim. Fry up some plantains, muddle up some mojitos, and you're halfway to Havana. Or swish together some sangria, spread some tapas on your outdoor dining table, and your patio furniture just chartered you a flight to Barcelona - minus the jet lag.

2. Aluminum patio furniture is not only ridiculously low maintenance; it's lightweight, and perfect for a musical chairs mixer. Invite friends from your various social circles - that cool couple from the farmers' market, your favorite Bunko hostess, your cube mate with the kickin' playlists. Every so often, scoot a patio chair from here to there, serve mixed nuts, mixed drinks, and make 'em mix.

3. Got a bistro set? Invite a friend over for petit dejeuner - baguettes mandatory, berets optional. Pull two chairs up to your cute little bistro table and dust off your high school French: "Deux cafes au lait et deux croissants, s'il vous plait." Ooh la la!

4. Throw a dinner party for Mother Earth. E-mail the invites and suggest guests bike or carpool to your house. You'll be outside, natch, with your recycled plastic patio furniture set providing the greenest seats in town. Once you're done, toss your leftovers in the compost bin and enjoy some footprint-free chilling on the patio by starlight. Don't forget to recycle the wine bottles!

5. Today's wicker patio dining sets are way slicker than your grandma's wicker. But, just for fun, use your wicker furniture set as the centerpiece for a grandma party. Play it straight and make granny's treasured cookie recipes, serve tea on your heirloom china, and enjoy an afternoon of sweet nostalgia. Or plant your tongue firmly in your cheek, serve meatloaf at 5:00, and invite your friends for a night of Bingo and shuffleboard. Your patio furniture may not look anything like your grandma's, but everyone will be having too much fun to notice.

6. When you have kids, a romantic dinner is any meal that doesn't come with a free toy. But with a nice patio furniture set there's no need for a babysitter. We have a plan. Feed the kids some mac and cheese and put them to bed. Then it's time to set the stage: White Christmas lights on the porch. (You know, the ones you never took down from the front yard? Move 'em to the back.) Fresh flowers on the patio table, your favorite crooner on the iPod speakers. You slip into a little black dress while he picks up take-out from the finest Italian place in town. That's amore.

7. Teak patio furniture is amazing. Not only does this stuff look great and lasts up to 75 years (seriously!) with pretty much no maintenance, teak is so durable that it's used for building ships. If you've been looking for an excuse to drink rum on your patio and talk like a pirate (and who hasn't?), there it is. Yo ho ho! You're welcome.

8. Indulge in some regression therapy with a kids' pool party for grown-ups. Serve Kool-Aid or Tang, blast the cheesiest pop music from the decade of your childhood, and kick it old school with snorkels, flippers, and water noodles for everyone. A plastic patio furniture set dries off quickly and is a perfect place to catch your breath between splash fests. Then get up, take a deep breath, and give us your best cannonball.