The Wonderful World of Crates

A wall in my house is dedicated to crates right now.  Not because I necessary want a wall of crates but I am storing them for an event.  As they have sat there the past moth I have found...Crates are so useful!  So many fun things to do with them.  They are great for Christmas decorations.  As you can tell by the picture below I use them to store stuff and my kids use them for their Lego's.

 Building a crate is easy.  Here we go with Crate 101....

Grab a piece of wood.  If you are like me you have a ton in the garage.  If not go down to Home Depot and grab what you like.  The piece of wood in the picture below cost about $1.60ish.

Decide what size you want your crate.  I'm going to build a 12x12" one.  Cut (6) 12 inch pieces.  Then cut 2 of those pieces in half lengthwise as shown in the picture below.

You should now have (4) 12 inch pieces and (4) 6 inch pieces.  Grab you handy dandy air powered staple gun.   If you don't have one you can use nails and a hammer.  I have to admit...this little tool is a lot of fun ;)

Staple the corners together to form a box.

This above picture was so hard to take with my left hand!  Here is a pic of the started box...

 Place your 6 inch pieces on the box you just built (the (2) 12 inch pieces we cut in half lengthwise).

Finally staple or nail those babies on.

Lately I have been using my crates for photo props but you can also use them for decoration.  Grab that crate you just made and paint it dark brown, sand it, make yourself a cute burlap wreath and this is what you get....

I'm not sure exactly how much this cost me to make total because I had all the supplies on hand but if I were to guess I would say about $3.00.  Can't beat that!