Re-purposed Fruit Crate

One of my trash to treasure moments.... 

You know you want to keep the vintage, awesome looking fruit crates of days of old... and would certainly stop and find good use for one if you saw it on the road, garage sale or a local goodwill store... but what about the flimsy fruit crates of today.. the ones made out of staples and funny shaped balsam wood?  They are still worth keeping, re-using, gifting and so on!

We happened to have a box of "Cuties" in the fridge and I thought I should just post this idea today.  When you look at the painted crate, it is hard to recall what it looked like originally.  The re-purposed fruit crate that once held Christmas Clementines is my kitchen counter junk-catch all.

I created it some time ago while my husband was a couple months a way from a year long deployment.  Our spouse group was crafting up sign boards with the Military Spouse wording.  I snagged the stencil and used it on a fruit crate.  I painted the under coat a solid blue (took about 3 to 4 coats to cover all of the wording), stenciled the wording, waited for it to dry and painted a clear coat.  You could probably do the same thing using your Cricut or Modge Podge other graphics on it.

Here are some other blogs that found a new purpose in clementine crates:

Kitchen wall shelves
modge podge over label
Colorful shelves for a child's room
Garden containers