🌴 How to Regain Your Peace, Time, and Energy

Good morning, Palmetto Parent!

School is back in session and we hope you are adjusting well to the early wake ups, lunch prep, and more regimented days. School schedules mean there’s even more value on the weekends with your kids and we hope our newsletter provides with you with some great ideas for family and community connection.

What’s inside this morning’s newsletter:

1. A new interactive hiking trail nearby

2. A community 5k and block party

3. The swankiest desserts around

4. How decluttering will transform your life

the.decluttered.mom

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To Do: Take a Hike on The TRACK Trails

We’re lucky to have one of South Carolina’s beautiful attractions, Cypress Gardens, in the neighboring town of Monks Corner. If you’ve watched the Notebook, Outer Banks, The Patriot (among other shows/movies), you glimpsed the beauty of Cypress Gardens. The Gardens include a butterfly house, bird exhibit, Swamparium, boating, and a play area. And now they have a brand new attraction that’s perfect for the family, the new TRACK Trail that opened on August 17th.

TRACK Trails are an initiative of Kids in Parks to give kids an engaging and fun way to explore nature. When you visit the Kids in Parks site, you’ll see a variety of trail adventures with e-Adventures and brochures that give your kids goals while they walk a trail.

Kids can log each adventure to win free prizes.

Nearby we have TRACK Trails at Rosebrock Park in Summerville, Wannamaker Park in North Charleston, Old Santee Canal Park in Monks Corner, and now Cypress Gardens in Monks Corner.

The e-Adventures at Cypress Gardens include “Bug Out,” “Flower Power,” “Nature’s Hide and Seek,” and “Birds.” The brochures you can download include activities to learn about ponds, flowers, nature cycles, and the birds specific to Cypress Gardens.

Click here to see all the e-Adventures and brochures available to enhance your time at Cypress Gardens.

Cypress Gardens admission is free for children 5 and under, $5 for ages 6-17, and $10 for other ages. The Gardens are open seven days a week from 9am-5pm with last admission at 4pm.

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An Event: Race + Block Party

This Saturday is the 25th Annual McElveen Race for The ARK and Block Party.

This event supports The ARK, a nonprofit designed to give support services to families dealing with Alzheimer’s and Dementia. For runners still interested, it’s not too late to sign up. You can do the 5k run/walk or the 1 mile fun run.

Discounted registration will be open until tomorrow, August 22nd, till 5:59pm and you can register at packet pick up or race day for a slightly higher price. (Better late than never!)

Daniel recently became an avid runner and just signed up to support the great cause. The 5k starts at 7:45am and the 1 mile at 8:45am. Both races start and finish at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church (206 Central Avenue) and go through downtown Summerville. Sign up for the race here. Families of 4 can sign up for the 1 miler for just $30. It’s an awesome opportunity to create memories with your family by getting active and supporting a great cause.

If running is not your thing (me…) then you can still join this event by participating in the community block party that follows! The block party will go from 10am-1pm and feature live music by The Palmetto Dance Band & Acoustic Stylings.

The following food vendors will be on site:

• The Knot Burger Pub (Beer Tent)

• Sunset Slush of Summerville 

• Double Shot Coffee

• Teas&Squeeze

• Booze Pops

• Citrus Crush 

• Locals Ice Cream 

• Zimos Gyros 

• Waffle Sensations 

• Big K’s, LLC BBQ & Chicken 

There will also be local craft vendors and fun activities for the kids. 😄 

Restaurant: Swank Desserts

When we were pregnant with my first son, my husband found out the gender test results over the phone from our doctor in Chicago and I had him plan a little reveal for me. We were new to the area so he went to our closest dessert shop, Swank Desserts, to see if he could find something blue. To his delight he found the prettiest blue macarons (pictured above) a perfect gluten free option for me. Not only were they stunning but they were delicious (smoked caramel flavor, YUM).

This week we returned to celebrate my son’s first day of preschool. I let him pick out what he wanted and of course he chose the beautiful blue macarons with gold flakes. He and I split one of those as well as the chocolate hazelnut macaron. Macarons are never my families first choice, but they know how to do them right there.

The interior of Swank Desserts is classy and modern, and their pastry case is full of eye pleasing desserts like giant cookies with gooey centers, deconstructed cakes in thoughtful flavors like ube crunch, chocolate + smoked caramel, and red velvet, macarons, brownies, and more.

For those who are gluten free, they had 3 delicious options to choose from (2 macarons and crème brûlée bites).

Their items in the display case vary daily and you can follow them on Instagram or Facebook to know what they have available. On Saturdays they feature donuts and other brunch items. They have an extensive catering menu and would be a great local choice for any cakes you need for celebrations. They pride themselves on making both delicious and aesthetically pleasing goods, which is very obvious from everything you see in the pastry case.

They also have a selection of unique sweet drinks. They have a dirty horchata latte featuring house made horchata, a passion fruit and thyme lemonade, and a honeycomb cold brew. While I was there I saw multiple people order the honeycomb cold brew and everyone was drooling over it and raving about how delicious it was. I snapped a picture of someone’s (below) and I definitely will be back to sample the drink menu.

Swank Desserts is located right downtown Summerville at 110 A S Cedar St.

They are open from 11-6 Tuesday-Friday and 10-5 on Saturdays.

Palmetto Piece: The Power of Ruthlessly Decluttering

Studies have shown that clutter spikes our cortisol levels — the stress hormone — and specifically show that women have significantly higher levels of stress during the times they spend dealing with their things.

So why do we have so much clutter?

About a year ago I stumbled on “The Decluttered Mom” account and it started radically transforming how I run my household. When it comes to decluttering (and I am definitely still on my journey), Diana of The Decluttered Mom helps us ask the right questions and move past some of the emotional ties we have to our belongings.

The image below shows some of the types of questions we ask ourselves that prevent decluttering.

I can definitely be hindered by the “What if I need this later?” and “What if it hurts their feelings if I get rid of it?” scenario. When getting rid of items I can also want them to go to the best place for them. At one point when I was cleaning my closet I had four separate piles of clothes for four different donation/resale places depending on what they were. Realistically, I am not driving to four different places. The piles say there for months and nothing was really decluttered.

But clutter is actually harmful.

It really, really affects how peaceful we feel in our own spaces.

I’ve learned that items don’t just equal money, they equal time. Time to clean things, take care of them, fix them, put them in their place. Realizing this has helped me be way more mindful of what enters our home. It also helped me realize that it’s not enough to just spend time organizing, you have to “ruthlessly declutter” (as Diana would call it) to have true change in your house.

You have to let go of some of those emotional ties and get rid of items that you simply don’t need.

Diana of The Decluttered Mom has both free and paid programs that help you ruthlessly declutter. This past year I did one of her free, five-day challenges and loved it. The challenge included ten-minute daily challenges like cleaning the front of your fridge, cleaning out a purse, and clearing the top of your washer/dryer. These seemingly small tasks make a huge difference as they remove visual clutter and that spike of cortisol you get when you see these spaces. As a parent, there is something so empowering about decluttering vs. just cleaning or organizing.

With kids in the house cleaning and organizing is so quickly undone and that gets defeating. Decluttering by getting rid of items — like a lot of items, so many — is something that can’t be undone and has long lasting positive impacts on your space.

Writing all this has me motivated to spend ten minutes tomorrow clearing out our front coat and shoe closet that collects dust bunnies.

What space could you spend just five to ten minutes decluttering that could make a difference in the long run? You don’t need to go clean your whole garage (because let’s be real, that won’t happen). Pick a small space that’s realistic and watch how your decluttering snowballs from there.

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