Merry Christmas!

  Yes, yes. I know it's only August! However I will only be taking Christmas orders until November 1st. Which is ONLY 2 1/2 months from now, can you believe it?! Where is this year going?

  For those of you who haven't been reading the other blog, Married to Battle Rattle, we will be moving to Virginia this Fall/Winter. The husband will be deploying so Baby and I will be moving to Quantico. It's where we'll be after the deployment and it's closer to family and friends. I am so excited to FINALLY be heading back in the direction of home and the East coast. It's a different world out here in California and I am ready for seasons again. Bring on the SNOW!

  I'm so excited that Baby Battle Rattle has been accepted into the EtsyKids Team! I am really looking forward to growing with them and sharing some of the other great stores that are a part of the team with you all. I have a lot of catching up to do with orders so this was just a short sweet little note for you all. I hope you've had wonderful weekends! (I'll try to get pictures of new shop items up next week!)

Sleep = Work

With 3 weeks down and one week left until my other half is home for a little while it's been hard to get projects finished with an 8 month old who just learned the art of crawling. So while she's napping away I've been a busy little worker bee trying to get some new products out for you all! Below are some of the things I've been working on this week and will have available for purchase later today (hopefully). I think the last picture might be my new favorite!!!

Large Hair ties.

Pig Tail hair ties.

Large Hair ties.

Baby wipes travel case.

Button Bobby pins.

Button bobby pins.

Boys green and MARPAT stroller blanket.

Ruffled bum onesie!

Grow, grow, grow

  As the days keep flying by I think of more items I want to add to our ever growing product line. Below is the newest addition! They are the first two produced and we will carry them in different sizes and as with everything else they will come in any military branch fabric.

 

As the week goes on I will be adding other new products and photos. I'm working on the boppy cover right now as well as a new blanket design. Stay tuned!                              

Peanut Butter, Chocolate & a Saturday Night Movie

So, this is a little different from the usual business post...I had originally sent it to a blog for military wives. After reading a post of theirs this morning, I no longer wish to be associated with them....so here is what I had to share for all the military wives out there......


You have your most comfortable pajama’s on, you know the ones I’m talking about! Green sweats with a little black EGA on the hip that are nicely worn in for you by someone else, the t-shirt that has holes but is so soft from years of love…yes those pjs. You’ve got your popcorn, peanut M&M’s (or fill in your favorite candy here), glass of wine and favorite go to movie for nights like this and yet something is missing. Your Marine.

If you’ve been married to your Marine for a while, you know EXACTLY what I’m describing here. It’s the end-of-a-hard-week-Saturday-night-middle-of-deployment (or field op)-me-time of the Marine wife. I’ve done about a hundred of these nights, and will do a hundred more. Sometimes it’s with girlfriends, sometimes alone, and for me, most recently with our new addition, our baby girl. I’m sure when you first married your Marine this was not the Saturday night you thought you’d have. It’s funny that our view of a situation can change after we are into it. It’s hard to remember you were supposed to drain the swamp when you’re knee deep in alligators! Everyone thinks and often says “I know it’s going to be hard, but I love him”. Well you’re marrying him, so I sure hope you love him, but looking back we don’t really know just how hard some of those times will be, do we? You don’t think about how many things he may miss because of a field exercise or deployment when you’re in a beautiful dress and your Marine is standing at the front of a church in the BEST dress uniform of them all, ready to make you his forever. Then the wedding is over and you don’t get a honeymoon until 6 weeks after your wedding because they’re going to (insert your favorite duty obligation here). Or that he’ll miss your pregnancy while "backpacking" across Iraq or Afghanistan, or worse the birth of your baby. You don’t think about him not being there for a birthday, family event, anniversary, or holiday. Why don’t you think about these things? Because you love him and as hard as ALL of those things are, it’s ok. You are a Marine wife; you can handle whatever the Marine Corps can throw at you! PCSing in a month, no problem! Pregnant alone? NO problem! Christmas without your Marine? E’ed Sae’ed! (Happy Holidays in Arabic) You’ll celebrate with other Marine wives. While our husbands adapt and overcome, so do we!

I’m not sure about you ladies, but as for me; I wouldn’t change my Marine Corps life and experiences for anything. These experiences have shaped my husband and me into who we are today. They’ve given us great friends, and taken a few. They’ve even brought us closer together through thousands of miles apart. I hope you all are enjoying this Marine Corps roller coaster ride. If you’re having one of those end-of-a-hard-week-Saturday-night-middle-of the-_____________(fill in the blank) nights tomorrow just remember you’re not alone and we will make it. After all, we are Marine Wives!

(For those who are reading that are Army Wives/Navy Wives/Air Force Wives just insert that where needed!) :)

Frank the Tank for baby Frank

I have FINALLY finished tearing apart Dave's FROG suit and finished the blanket for baby Frank. It turned out fantastic...especially since I wasn't so sure about using the material from the FROG suit! I hope you all love it, but mostly I hope our dear friends Dave and Andrea love it for their so very soon-to-be son! Enjoy the pictures and there's a little something extra I've made for them too.

Let the Games Begin

Ahh, another week has come and another week has gone. Is it me or do they go by faster when you want them to slow down and slower when you want them to go faster? Last week was the week my husband was home between his month at Ft. Benning, GA and his 3 1/2 weeks in San Antonio, TX/Brunswick, ME. So naturally the week went by in a flash!

With the husband home to help with our daughter it gave me some time to work on ideas for Baby Battle Rattle. There have been so many new ideas to add to the product line I don't know how I'm going to get them all made up and out of my brain! Being the kindergarten artist that I am, I decided I'd draw them all out so I wouldn't forget anything that I'd concocted in my head as I was drifting off to sleep each night...because seriously, who REALLY works when your husband is home for ONE week and you have a darn cute baby smiling at you to come play with them? This week I have come up with seven new items I would like to add on to the product list.

Now that it's just baby and me again, I'm back to my cutting board. During nap time, of course! Tonight's project was cutting up the fabric for the Big Squares Blankets, that you all seem to love since I can hardly make them fast enough for everyone and a new item, and a Boppy cover. I made the pattern and have already cut half the fabric out, tomorrow I hope to finish it and post some fabulous pictures for everyone.

FROG

What a wonderful week! My husband arrived home on Friday night finally. He'd been gone for over a month with training and then Jump School back to back. He'll be home only a week before he leaves us again for more training...but hey, I really shouldn't complain, it's not a deployment.

I have so many wonderful friends having babies right now. It seems like there's a new little bundle due to arrive each month! The next to arrive will be our dear friends Dave & Andrea's little boy in August. I am working on a new blanket design for their soon-to-be son and am making it out of Dave's FROG suit! I can't wait to see how this turns out, it's been challenging to say the least.

I am still waiting on the latest shipment of Desert MARPAT from our new supplier. I can't wait to get it and start getting orders our to everyone! I'm so excited about the new things to come out and am really looking forward to sharing them with you all.

Hello Summer, Goodbye Blog-time

Another post, far behind schedule. What can I say? It's summer and our schedule is C-R-A-Z-Y. With my husband home one week and gone five and so on and so on for the summers entireity things have piled up. So, what's new around here? For starters I've added some new products to Baby Battle Rattle's lineup. Along with the blankets, hooded towels, washcloths and binkey slings there are shoes. I'm so happy with the shoes! They are adorable if I do say so myself. I'm also working on dresses. Once I can nail down the pattern I will add them to our sales listings.

Along with the new baby gear comes a new fabric supplier. I've been searching for weeks and I think I may have a new one. We'll see how their quality is when I get the first batch! It's amazing that we're already into July. It feels like it was just Christmas time and Jeremy and I had just come home from the hospital with our little early Christmas gift. Now it's Christmas In July time! I'm thinking about doing a Christmas In July sale in our Etsy store and donating the savings to the Wounded Worrier Project. I'll have to wait to see how the new fabric supplier is, I wouldn't want to jump the gun and then not have the product to ship.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Fourth of July. I will try to be better (as always) about keeping up with the blog...but you know how it goes! :)

Where does the time go?

With my husband finally having so time at home, I have some time to work. While he is taking our daughter out on runs with him I am working on new designs and our website. Since I don't know when everything will be finished with the website and ready for launch I have set up shop in http://www.etsy.com/. The store name on Etsy is, of course, Baby Battle Rattle. I will post products there until further notice, and as always if you want to do a special order we are more than happy to accommodate. Below are some new pictures of things I've been working on!

The top picture is the USMC monogram washcloth, the middle picture is of our Big Squares USMC stroller blanket, and the last picture is our Army ACU boys hooded bath towel. (And yes, I had my USMC baby girl pose in the boys Army bath towel.)

Army & Navy & Marines...Oh my!

This past week I went to a local fabric store. I had intended to find some cute fabric to make my daughter a dress when I discovered that this store sells MARPAT, ACU, and the Navy's new cammies material by the spool! I'm so excited that I'll be able to start working on designs for ALL the branches little bundles and not just my fellow Marine babies.

I finished our first "official" order for a boys Marine desert/blue stripe stroller blanket last week as well. A great friend of my husband and mine ordered a stroller blanket for his friends son. I am so happy that I can start getting some of our products out there to people. If any of you have something that you would like to order I will be happy to personally get it out to you and work with you. You can email us at babybattlerattle@yahoo.com. Our product list so far is as follows:

(A boys USMC desert/blue stripe stroller blanket and the front/back of my daughters binkey sling)

*girls USMC desert or woodland/pink stripes stroller or receiving blanket

*girls Army ACU/pink stroller or receiving blanket

*boys USMC desert or woodland/blue stroller or receiving blanket

*boys Army ACU/blue stroller or receiving blanket

*girls Navy cammies/pink stroller or receiving blanket

*boys Navy cammies/blue stroller or receiving blanket

*girls USMC, Army, or Navy pink washcloth & hooded bath towel

*boys USMC, Army or Navy blue washcloth & hooded bath towel

*girls & boys personalized binkey sling

WOW...it looks like so much more now that I've typed it all out! Things are still moving along and we just ordered our first batch of business cards. I hope that everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend and was able to enjoy it with their families, and for those of you with loved ones who are deployed they (and you) are in our prayers!

Not so small...

When I started thinking about turning my one small keep-me-busy-while-the-husbands-deployed craft into an actual business I thought I would start out with just a few products. I figured I'd start out with the blankets, bath towels, and maybe bibs. Now that I've started the process I've got 11 products on my list and it's growing daily!

I've sent some ideas to my brother-in-law who is a graphic designer about what I want the logo to look like and the type of graphics I want on the website. I'm so excited to see what he comes up with for me and to finish building the website so you all can start to enjoy my products too. If there are things that anyone wants to see in the store when it gets up and running, please let me know and I'll do my best to make it happen!

Work and Play

I spent most of the night working on fabrics for Baby Battle Rattle. While I was working my husband was laying down with our daughter next to me and playing with her. Well I guess they were all worn out from the day, within 5 minutes they were both sound asleep and covered up with her blanket. As I was working I got more and more inspired with other product ideas!

I am so excited to be designing the website and working on the logo design. I think I have found a fabrics company to supply the MARPAT, ACU, and other military fabrics but with the blizzard that has hit the East coast this week (and last!) it's put things go on hold until they can dig out. I've decided that for those who would like, they can mail in their own cammies for have their blankets made with or they can us the fabric I provide. Stay tuned for more updates on our progress!

Webpage design

I spent a long time looking at different web hosting sites last night. For someone who isn't too familiar with web design, code or anything that falls in between this was a lot of work for me! I have narrowed it down to two web hosts and web design programs. I am so excited to start working on getting the web page for the store up and running. I have so many decisions to start making about how I want the website to look and how to set it up so it's easy for you all to navigate and shop around the site.

Since my husband and I are in the process of moving right now it will still be a few weeks before babybattlerattle.com will be up and running. I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks about our products and how they like (or dislike) the website once it is up and going! Stay tuned and I will let you all know as soon as it is launched.

The Beginning

Baby Battle Rattle began as a small idea during my husbands second deployment. We found out shortly after he left that we were expecting our first baby. In true military wife fashion I wanted to stay as busy as possible while he was gone. I decided that I would make our new little bundle of joy a blanket out of Daddy's old uniform. Little did I know that this project would spark the interest of so many friends and family! After I finished the blanket I posted pictures of my handy-work on facebook. I had so many people asking "Where did you buy that" and "I want one!" that I decided I would start a business.





Baby Battle Rattle will have blankets, towels, washcloths, burp cloths, pacifier clips, and robes all for Military Brats. They can be personalized or monogrammed and will be available in a variety of colors and styles. I am so excited to be starting this company and cannot wait to share these products with the rest of those military babies out there! I will keep you all posted as I go through the process of starting up this new company.

Our daughter Madison napping on the blanket that launched the idea for Baby Battle Rattle.