What is Snapdragon All About?

Welcome to Snapdragon, I'm Jane.

Fifteen years ago I moved to the countryside - to grow things, to keep chickens, to live in tune with the seasons. I wanted to slow down, to spend time with my family, to learn how to simplify my life.

We settled in a patch of land in Loch Lomond National park and I learned how to grow food and flowers, how to create a garden and try and keep it all from being eaten. I learned how being in nature and finding time to be creative changed the way I felt. I discovered simple ways to make life more joyful.

I did not come to a simpler, more seasonal, more engaged way of living for any altruistic reason. It wasn’t spiritual or ecological, or even for the good of my children.

It was a purely pragmatic thing.

I have an auto-immune condition called Addisons disease. Basically a part of my brain, my hypothalamus, doesn’t work properly and it no longer sends orders to other parts like my pituitary and adrenals who therefore sit around lazing away, doing nothing much. It is really well controlled as a condition - I take daily steroid medication - but my body is a little bit like a car with the wrong grade of petrol in it. It doesn’t run smoothly, it putters and misfires, I get random symptoms, I am always very tired and very hungry.

Some days are naturally better than others and what I have spent the last decade working out is how to minimise the bad days and maximise the good days. I have become an expert on how to live well with an auto-immune condition, how to get the absolute best from my life.

Fairly early on it was obvious that the more stressed I was, the worse my symptoms were - if I allowed myself to become stressed then I would soon be so tired that I could hardly move, my brain would fog up, I couldn’t get the correct words into sentences. I would be panicking inside but I couldn’t let anyone else know what I was feeling, I would turn mute and sleepy.

For the past decade I have tried to work out how to minimise stress, how to turn myself from a constantly striving perfectionist into someone who was actually enjoying life.

It is all these things that I share in my blog, newsletters, ebooks and membership - not just with people who need to manage their stress because of auto-immune conditions or anxiety or depression, but with everyone who could benefit from slowing down, connecting, getting in touch with creativity, with nature, with people.

I’m not interested in creating elaborate complicated flower arrangements or show stopping cakes. I am no longer about striving for perfection. I am all about the practical and the easy win.

What I share is the simple, the traditional, the seasonal - easy ways to do things, behind the scenes tips, things to make life joyful.

And at the same time I run a small business, creating homewares and creative kits based on my life in rural Scotland, season by season.

Snapdragon is the result of all that - a shop, a membership, a community.

I love to design, I love to write, I love to garden and cook and sew and sit and watch the world. You will find my life in our blog, in our free Facebook Group and in my weekly newsletters.

I would love to get to know you better so please do join us and get in touch - jane@snapdragononline.co.uk.