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Gifts of fresh fruit make wonderful surprises for a hostess, overworked friend or sick neighbor. Here’s how you can create your own fruit basket for much less than you would pay to buy one pre-packed at the grocery store or have one shipped.

Find a pretty wicker basket, small wooden crate or wire container with plenty of surface room for displaying your fruit. Even a never-used picnic basket makes a superb container. Before you go to the craft store to buy a container, check around your house to see if you have one in good condition that you aren’t using. (Most of us do!)

Pad the bottom of your basket with crumpled newspaper to make it appear fuller and boost the contents to a more eye pleasing appearance. Cover the newspaper with a few sheets of festive tissue paper. (Yellow, orange, red, or green look great against fruit.)

Assemble your fruit in the basket, placing the largest items in first, such as a DOLE Pineapple, cantaloupe, or honeydew melon. Next, layer in medium and any odd-sized fruit, such as green tipped DOLE Bananas (save yellow bananas for the top layer since they may bruise more easily), papayas, coconuts, and mangoes. Don’t feel you have to use the entire piece of fruit. A papaya sliced in half and covered in plastic wrap is much prettier than the whole fruit.

To fill out the basket, add in oranges, red and green apples, and pomegranates. This firm fruit will help prop up the bigger fruit and cushion the more fragile pieces.

Complete the basket with delicate fruit such as pears, plums, peaches, yellow bananas and kiwi – make sure nothing is over-ripe. For extra color, add in a few small boxes of DOLE Seedless Raisins or cans of DOLE Pineapple Juice.

Wrap your finished basket in decorative cellophane. For a super professional touch, wrap your basket in shrink-wrap, which you can purchase at your local craft store, following the packaging instructions.Top off your fruit basket with a big, beautiful bow.