My Baby Shower!!!

My Baby Shower was held on Sunday and had such a blast I decided to post about it!  My baby shower was held at the Acacia Restaurant in Westborough, MA.  I think they did a really nice job with the room set-up and the delicious brunch buffet. They were great to work with and it was an easy location to get to (right off Route 9).

But before I discuss all that, let's chat about the baby!

Since I don't write a lot about what's going on with our baby on this blog, you may not know that we are doing a turtle theme for our little guy's room. But, maybe you did know that if you follow me on Pinterest.  By the way, follow me here!

One of the first things I found was this bedding and I was hooked! Unfortunately it was a Carter's bedding set that was discontinued.  So once I found it online somewhere, I acted quick and ordered as much as I could.  Which included the bedding- sheets, bumpers (ya I know I know), the rug, the lamp, the mobile.  Yep, I went a little turtle crazy.

I pretty much fell in love with all things turtles and trees.  My friend Meg has been painting a mural in our nursery and I can't wait to show it all off to you guys... SOON.  

Back to my Shower.  Obviously my invitations had to have a turtle theme too!  My friend Stephanie actually found these invites on Etsy.  I wasn't totally in love at first but they grew on me and the turtle was just too cute for words...

(PS, click that link to Steph's blog.  She recently bought a new house and she's been blogging about how she's decorating it.  She is having a boy any day now so you can check out her nursery too!)

My mom and I were trying to think of cute centerpiece ideas to go with the theme.  We decided we wanted to do flowers and have some sort of turtle theme with it.  I ordered these, only they somehow got sent back to the sender and I didn't get them in time : (

Random tangent...every year on the first day of spring my company gives every employee a small pot of tulips or some other seasonal flower.  Look how beautiful!

We really lucked out because my mom was having trouble finding flowers in small pots... and my company was generous and let me have ten of these guys! So I decorated them with turtle stickers and balloons and they were perfect centerpieces.  

In addition, my mom added to the turtle theme with turtle outfits hung on clothes pins along the wall...

And Stephanie made me a Turtle Diaper Cake : )

My mother-in-law brought the most delicious cake from a bakery on the North Shore.

 And most of my friends enjoyed delicious Mimosa's.

The food was great too.... typical brunch food of eggs, bacon, waffles, and fruit.

And pretty soon, it was time to open gifts.  Let's just say... there were a lot of gifts.  But Dave ripped through them pretty quickly.

 My best friend Courtney was a trooper... she shuffled the gifts around and organized everything perfectly.  She also gave us the cutest gift.

She got us this cute Baby Colanto crate with all the feeding tools needed for the next few years : )

It was a great night with wonderful friends and family.  And I can't thank my mom and mother-in-law enough for throwing me such a wonderful shower!

Future Running Goals

Ahhh the goals post. This type of blog entry seems very common among Moms-To-Be.  Well mine will be a little different. As much as I'd love to sit here and type out my goals for Summer 2012, I know in my heart that I have no idea what to expect come May.

In May, I'm going to be a Mom.  That was weird to type.  Do I hope to be a Running Mom?  You bet.  Do I hope to be a Marathon Running Mom. The Truth? No.

I've run three marathons and I haven't really, truly enjoyed ANY of them.  I guess I sorta enjoyed the training but on race day I was never capable of running the times I thought I could.  Case in point, I trained my heart out for NY and only ran 2 minutes faster than Boston- a race I only trained for 2 months.  I'm just not sure the marathon and I are right for each other.

And if I'm having these feelings BEFORE the baby, it's certainly not going to get any easier to train AFTER.  

So my goals are simple. (In my head at least...)

My goals for after this baby are to get fast.  I'm talking racing 5Ks.  Maybe a 5 Miler.  Nothing longer.  The way I see it is like this...  After I have our baby, I'm going to have WAY less time.  After I go back to work, I'm going to have even less time.  So my plan is to make every run and every workout I do worthwhile.

If you ask me what I'm passionate about or what my life mission statement is, I would say: To get the most done in the least amount of time while still maintaining a strong work ethic and quality product.

This is how I operate at work, in my kitchen and soon, with my workouts.

So to do this I must do what exactly?  Simply: Run fast in little time.  If I have a half hour to get a workout done, I will be running as fast as I possibly can for those 30 minutes. If I only have 10 or 15 minutes, the same theory applies.

I am not going to tell you what paces I hope to run this summer because I have no idea what my labor or recovery will be like.  I will tell you that I hope to get close to my PRs again and get on the track more.  The track is where I fell in love with running to begin with.  I want to run fast in events I can no longer sign up for: the mile, 800, 600, 400, 200.  I want to feel fast again.

And with the Olympics around the corner, I know I'll be even more motivated to run around my favorite oval.  I've already warned my husband to expect our DVR to be filled to the brim with track and field events from the 2012 Olympics!

(this is my college coaches' son Matthew Centrowitz at a track meet in Boston in February)

So there you have it.  My running goals for Summer 2012. It consists of really having no goals.  Come May my life will change in ways I can't imagine and I want to set myself up for success, not failure.

Moms- Any advice?

Restaurant Review: Tomasso Trattoria & Enoteca

First off, I apologize for my rant on my last post.  Dave thinks I scared away some of my readers so I apologize for being very insensitive, but sometimes a girls got to vent!!!

Last night Dave and I had plans to go into Boston to celebrate my best friend Courtney's 30th birthday.  But before that, I suggested trying out Tomasso on Rt. 9 in Southboro, a restaurant we have passed a thousand times before.

We got there at about 6:45 and the place was already really crowded.  We were told that without reservations, the only seats available were either at the bar or at the kitchen window.  A chance to view the chefs cook while enjoying a tasty meal?  I was all about it!

Located east bound on Route 9 in Southboro, Tomasso offers Italian cuisine with a seasonal menu that features sustainable and humanely raised ingredients from local farms and fishermen.  Our waiter greeted us quickly and told us about the restaurant.  I was very impressed by the long list of farms and fisherman that the chef uses around the New England area.  I was also impressed by the dates on the menu.  The menu changes weekly based on what's in season and what's available.

We were pretty hungry so we quickly ordered the Olives and the Insalata Verde, which was made literally right in front of us.

 A simple salad with delicious flavors.  The lemony vinaigrette was a perfect pair  with the pecorino cheese, pickled onions and peppery arugula.  It was a great first dish! Dave and I also enjoyed the olives.  I'm not usually in love with olives, but these were so fresh and had tons of flavor with various spices.

While we ate, we enjoyed watching the chefs in the kitchen.  They were very fast and efficient!

For dinner, I decided to get a half order of the gnocchi, a dish on their primi menu.  Primi, or first courses, are fresh pastas that the chefs make daily.  They usually act as a prelude to the main course, but I wanted something small and not too filling so it was perfect for my main meal. 

This was such a fantastic pairing!  Bitter radicchio mixed with speck (a type of prosciutto) with rich gnocchi over a creamy parmesan sauce.  I loved it and ate every last bite!

Dave ordered a special of the evening. Pulled lamb over a creamy chickpea polenta with spicy peppers.

 I think he loved it because after one bite from me, I blinked and the dish was gone! Mixing polenta and chickpea was really interesting.

I really wanted dessert to complete the meal but we were in a huge rush to get into the city and the place was really crowded so I knew it would take awhile.  The only small complaint I have about this place was the service.  It's definitely a place you go to when you have time to leisurely eat, not a place to go to when you have plans after.  Which is totally fine and something I will definitely plan for in the future.  All in all, it was a delicious restaurant with fresh, local ingredients that are balanced so well.  I really can't wait to go back (with more time!) I highly recommend it!

 After dinner we headed into Legals Harborside for drinks (ahem Shirley Temples for me) to celebrate my best friends 30th!  I'm currently 31 weeks pregnant and everyone was super impressed I was out and stayed out so late.  (We didn't get home until 12:30am!)  But I honestly feel pretty great and I had a ton of fun last night. And since I haven't posted a photo on this blog in a long time, here are some bump photos of BFF Courtney and me!