Gretchen Rubin, Happier at Home ? Retro Renovation

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends. ? Samuel Johnson, the Rambler, No, 68.

That?s the very first quote in Gretchen Rubin?s brand new book, Happier at Home (affiliate link) which ? like its predecessor The Happiness Project ? is sure to be a blockbuster. The Samuel Johnson quote immediately hit home for me, because golly, isn?t this blog about finding happiness in our sweet little midcentury homes? about loving the house you?re in, instead of pining after what it may lack? and about giving our houses our tender loving care ? so that they can give theirs back?

Crikes, sorry to get all mushy there. But in case you haven?t guessed, I am hugely enormously, gigantically, sentimental about happiness in house and home. It is kind of? all that I think about. I also just read Gretchen Rubin?s first book The Happiness Project (affiliate link) in July. I thought that the book was hugely enormously gigantically brilliant. It was a #1 New York Times best-seller for good reason. The book is NOT self-help FLUFF. This woman is a take-no-prisoners serious, avid researcher. She wrote lauded history books about Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy before she turned to the more prosaic, yet elusive, topic of Happiness. In a nut, with The Happiness Project, she synthesized amazing amounts of research on the topic? and then? and this was the especially brilliant part: She put her findings to work in her own life, small-step-by-small-step, over a 12-month period, and chronicled her experience.? The book is super easy to read, super encouraging ? but at the same time, it?s deeeeeep. How often can you say that.

Now, Gretchen (I don?t think she will mind my familiarity) has followed up her first best-selling happiness book with a second one that focuses even more specifically on cultivating happiness within your home and with the creatures who may live there with you.

Three chances to win a copy of Happier at Home:

I have, in my hot little hand, an advance copy of Happier At Home mailed to me by publisher Harper Perennial. I have been carefully reading it. And, when I?m done, I will give it a kiss for good luck, and pass it on to a reader. Would you like to win it?

And it gets better, I?ve joined with two friends (a big key to happy) in the giveaway, so you can triple your chances of winning by visiting my friends? blogs and entering there, too:

How to enter, now through Sunday (Sept. 16) night:

• Leave a Comment ? I don?t want to force you to be mushy, but if you would like to share a simple way to boost happiness that has worked for you, that would be lovely.
• You must be in the U.S., so sorry, blame the hassle of trying to deal with customs.
• Contest closes at 10:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, Sept. 16; Pam will choose a winner by random.org random number generator after the contest closes and then email the winner. Winner must respond within one week. If they do not, she will choose another winner. Rinse. Repeat.
• Pam will post the name of the winner at the top of this post as soon as they confirm.

One more happy thing: Last week Gretchen gave a shout out to Retro Renovation on her blog ? and send several hundred new visitors our way. She like the retro. Can ya believe it. I can: Retro is Happy!

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Source: http://retrorenovation.com/2012/09/10/gretchen-rubin-happier-at-home/

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