Welcome [Back] to Virginia!

My parents recently moved back to Virginia!  They moved to Florida about 11 years ago after they retired, but now that they have a grand-baby they wanted to come back to be closer to him.  Although they'll pretend it's to be closer to me and my brother. :)

To welcome them back, I put together a gift full of products that were either made in or representative of Virginia:

I originally planned on including some maps, a list of my favorite places, and some funny news stories, but since my mom was good about keeping up with their old stomping grounds from Florida, and had lived here for decades, I figured that was overkill.  Plus it takes the fun out of them exploring new roads and stores, right?

I decided to keep it simple, and included...

• Virginia peanuts and pumpkin butter from the Virginia Diner Shoppe
• A postcard, featuring our state flower and bird, to write a welcome home message
• Virginia is for Lovers pen
• Virginia garden flag

...and a little something for their cat, Tigger:

I tried to fit these things neatly into a basket, and thought about trying to find some Virginia fabric to line it, but the awkward shapes of the items didn't really fit into that plan.  So I DIY'ed my own Virginia packaging.  

I am no artiste, but I did a Google image search to find a simple map of Virginia, and then just tried to draw something that sort of resembled what I was looking at.  You can probably see some dots within the outline of the state - I made marks for the major twists and turns so I didn't go all wonky...it'll do. :)