09/01/2026
I'll try to catch up a little with posts. One of the exciting personal projects we've been working on over the past year is a home we own with my daughter in Mt. Gretna Pennsylvania. We bought a cottage in the Chautauqua neighborhood last Fall, and did a number of updates, including moving some plumbing around, beefing up the insulation, and adding central air.
One of those updates was the kitchen. Of course, we used our Inglenook tiles on the floor. We chose the San Sebastian style, in our simple Classic color mix. Pat Foy of Lancaster did the installation. The varied tones you see in the bricks arise from firing in different parts of the kiln. We wanted to retain the cottage feel of the 1911 home, which was built as a summer retreat like the other neighboring homes. The community is about an hour from our home in Quarryville.
The Chautauqua Movement has such an interesting history, as does the community of Mt. Gretna. It is a community that hosts an annual outdoor juried art show and documentary film festival, features wonderful music and theater in an outdoor pavilion, and lectures on various topics are held in The Hall Of Philosophy. All of the cottages have names. There is a little lake and the Jigger Shop (locally famous for ice cream).
The Mt. Gretna neighborhoods are in old woodland with miles of trails. We were lucky to purchase a property, since many people wait years for an available cottage. Having family in the community helped. Jeff's cousin Dwight (Cocalico Builders) worked hard to get the cottage ready for my daughter to move in for the summer prior to the birth of her son (he is now almost a month old!). She and her husband have a home in Seattle, but she wanted to have her baby near me, and close to where she was also born and raised.
We've been enjoying the "porch life" in Mt. Gretna on weekends.
