OUR STORY
We carry what came before us. We build what comes next.
This is Gina's Story.
The woman behind it all
Gina Madonna Gilligan has spent her life building beautiful things in the mountains.
For over thirty-five years, she worked in Big Bear real estate — furnishing model homes, staging properties, developing an eye for what makes a space feel like somewhere worth living. She didn't just sell homes. She built worlds inside them. And along the way, she collected the pieces that made those worlds worth inhabiting — vintage Pendleton blankets, turquoise jewelry, hand-carved figures, geodes, antique taxidermy, artwork, clothing that had already lived a hundred lives before finding its way to Big Bear.
In recent years, Gina's health gave her reason to slow down and take stock. It wasn't a stopping point — more of a redirection. A moment that has a way of clarifying what actually matters. And what became clear was this: a lifetime of carefully chosen things, a family legacy worth passing on, and a story that deserved to be told. And it couldn't silence her mother's voice.
For Harlene Cook Madonna.
Her Mother's Gift
Gina's mother, Harlene Cook Madonna, was shaped by a woman who understood hard circumstances from the very beginning.
Harlene's own mother — Gina's grandmother — was half Irish, half Choctaw, and came into the world in an era where nothing about her circumstances was easy. She built her life anyway. With grace, with grit, and with an unshakeable belief that doing something, even in hard circumstances, was always better than doing nothing. That belief passed to Harlene, and through Harlene, to Gina.
When Gina was navigating her health and wondering what to do with a lifetime of carefully chosen things sitting in storage, it was Harlene who pushed her forward. Just do something, she said. Even from where you are.
Mountain Living is that something.
Harlene has since passed. But her idea lives here — in every piece on these shelves, in every story behind every object, in every customer who walks out with something they'll keep for the rest of their life.
This shop is dedicated to her.
Roots that run deep.
The Heritage
There is a distant thread of Native heritage woven into Gina's family story — carried through her grandmother, a woman of Irish and Choctaw descent who passed her values down through the generations more than her bloodline. Gina holds that thread lightly and honestly. She doesn't claim more than is true.
What she does carry — genuinely, and in full — is a deep reverence for objects made with intention. A respect for things that hold history. An understanding that a piece of Native American jewelry is not a trend. It is a living artifact of a culture that deserves to be honored, not merely sold.
That is the spirit this shop is run with. Every piece chosen carefully. Every origin respected. Every object given a home it deserves.
A different kind of general store.
THE SHOP
Gina spent three decades furnishing and staging homes in Big Bear — not other people's properties, but homes she and Bob built together, two and three model homes running at any given time. She sourced every room. She chose every piece.
What accumulated over those years was something extraordinary: an inventory of vintage and heritage objects too good to let go and too meaningful to throw out. Vintage Pendleton. Native american turquoise and one-of-a-kind jewelry. Hand-hewn furniture, geodes, antique sporting goods, and finds that simply don't exist anywhere else.
Mountain Living is where all of it finally has a home.
The mountain life, extended.
Bob & Homes by Gilligan
Bob Gilligan spent decades building homes in Big Bear alongside Gina — the builds, the staging, the collecting, the worlds they made together inside four walls of timber and stone. He's earned his retirement, and he's enjoying every bit of it.
The legacy of that work lives on through Homes by Gilligan. For those who fall in love with Mountain Living and start dreaming about what it would mean to actually live in these mountains — it's the next step. Big Bear real estate rooted in the same values as the shop. Beautiful things. Intentional living. The mountain life, made real.
You're always welcome
COME FIND SOMETHING WORTH KEEPING
Mountain Living is coming soon to 42573 Moonridge Road in Big Bear Lake — a curated shop in the heart of Big Bear, built from thirty-five years of living, collecting, and loving these mountains.
In the meantime, everything you see here is available online. Browse, find something worth keeping, and know that every piece was chosen with intention.
When the doors open, we can't wait to welcome you in person.