Door Inspiration from Across the Pond

While I was on Holiday in England, I was struck with the beauty of all the English doors I would encounter both in the English countryside and in London. Everyone seemed unafraid of using color, lovely hardware etc. to  make their front doors stand out. I started an impromptu #dooroftheday on my 

Instagram

 after falling in love with all the pretty doors I would see, a fun way to share my love of pretty front doors. Follow me on Instagram @mrsclh to see more of these fabulous English doors and musings from my day to day. 

A quick fun fact about English doors, most doors in England don't have the traditional 'American Door Knob,' most of the doors in the United Kingdom have night latches instead and also use old fashioned skeleton keys, if a door does have a knob its usually placed in the center of the door. Its so cool how country can be so similar, yet have subtle differences. 

Here's a roundup of fantastic inspirational doors. 

Here's proof that even if your home has a brick exterior you don't have to play it safe and paint your door a basic color: red, white or black. This green door looks so good paired with the aging brick on this lovely home. On my house, we have a mixture of brick + siding and I went with the bold

fun color of Chartreuse

 for my door, and couldn't be happier. 

Many homes in England are 

terraced houses

 which are a row of mirror houses that share side walls, making it hard to stand out in a crowd. One way to help give your house more personality is by having a bright colored door or unique front door. I loved seeing terraced houses side by side that looked so unique to do their

 door choices and paint color. 

This wood arched door is to die for, trust me when I say its even more stunning in person. 

This Parisian door, stole my heart while in vising Paris for the day. I intend to print this door out and frame it, I know whenever I see it I'll think of Paris. 

I hope you enjoyed a few of my favorite doors, I came across while on my Holiday. I put together several ideas for to take your front door from blah to wow, that I'm sharing next week on the blog! Do you also have a thing with lovely doors? Do they also stop you in your tracks and make stop and take pics? 

Still Cable Free

About once a year, I love sharing an update about how my family has been 100% cable free for years. Back in 2011 we noticed we were watching less and less of our cable shows and more of watching TV though our Roku player [ read more about our decision here] We decided to wait 6 months before, making it official and cutting our cable cord, happily with the decision to cut the cable cord also came with saving money each month on a service we no longer used. I love sharing our cable free household updates because its great reminder to elevate how your watching television [ can your household cut the cable cord and save money? ]  I also like sharing our breakdown and what channels we pay for, along with sharing a few shows you simply must check out [ see here for a few recent favs ] 

As I mentioned above we watch TV though our Roku player, which is streaming device for playing various channels by using your WiFi. Once Roku is connected to your WiFi network, your able to subscribe to several channels including: NetflixHulu, Amazon Prime and many many more. Some channels are free and some you pay a monthly subscription fee for. Currently we pay a monthly subscription to Netflix [ been a member for pretty much forever ] Hulu and Amazon. We also subscribe to a few free channels that have a few movies & television shows on them. My favorite free channel is PBS, its where I watch the latest Masterpiece Classics & Mysteries including: Downton Abbey [ boo only one series left ] and Grantchester. The channels are setup your television just like apps are on your phone.

Personally, Roku has been a huge game

 changer in my household and really changed they way we watch our television & how we think of television. I now watch TV shows when I want to vs. when their on, no more sitting around on Thursday nights waiting for shows to come on. I can binge watch my favorite shows and watch them on weekends or whenever I have time. 

In addition to Roku, they are several other streaming devices now on the market including Amazon Fire and Apple TV just to name a few. For our household we love our tried and true Roku Player. Thanks to an app with have our phones, we never have to worry about losing the remote control, we can just use our phone. 

I love how intuitive TV watching though Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu is, they recommend so many shows based on my family's viewing habits. For me they're always recommending  British TV Show or Movie. I've seriously discovered so many amazing shows thanks to Netflix and Hulu, which can be dangerous since I LOVE binge watching lol. And its not just new TV shows I've discovered its older ones too, that are in their 4th season or so and I've just recently got hooked thanks to the recommendations they've given me based on my viewing history. 

Here's a quick breakdown of what we pay for, Internet $55 [ via Comcast a service we'd pay for even if we had cable ] Netflix $8.99, Hulu $7.99 [ they now offer Showtime as an add-on amount ] and Amazon Prime $100 per year [ Amazon Prime membership also includes FREE shipping - the amount breaks down to $8.33 a month, can't beat that

plus free shipping!!

]  So roughly we pay around $ 25.00 a month to watch TV which includes a ton of movies, and a huge catalog of foreign TV shows and old shows that are still good to watch. 

My Hulu view

As for kids, I love that Avery can watch a slew of shows [ when we let him! ] including old schools favorites like Sesame Street & Reading Rainbow. Do you remember Reading Rainbow? Its such a good show and perfect to help spark kids love of reading. Our oldest son watch his movies and a few ABC Family shows, but mostly he's in his room being a teen. We have two Roku players in our house, on in the living room and one in our bedroom. Tabari uses his Wii U in his bedroom to watch Netflix [ but during the school week! ] 

As for a few good shows to check out, I highly recommend these UK shows found on Netflix , Hulu & Amazon Prime: Happy Valley, Doc Martin, Scott & Bailey, Outlander and Broadchurch....trust me, as Bruno Mars would say '

d

on't believe just watch

Now for my favorite, what's your thoughts. Do you have a love / hate relationship with cable? Is your home cable free or do you have both cable and a Roku [ or other streaming device ] ?