Thank you everyone for the advice. I went back to Sherwin Williams and played with 1 gallon of paint some more. Made it more blue and more purple...less mauve. Got it home and painted the section between the window where I had my "test" shutter and the front door. Put the shutter back up and realized that I didn't like it. It just looked cold and turned grey, but not a good grey. So, we stuck with the mauvish color. With the 2nd coat is was a little bit more muted. We got the shutters/windowboxes etc. back up and it looks pretty good. I think the mauve is still a bit too pink and the shutters could use to be a bit darker (but hubby said no-way to repainting those this year.) But it looks cottagey and inviting to me and that was my goal. The cream that I had before wasn't bad. I might have kept it if it had not been for the school bus yellow house directly next door. My cream just looked like a washed out version of the yellow. I would have liked to have painted my house a light, warm yellow but that obviously wouldn't have worked with bright yellow next door. I'll be posting some pictures as soon as I can get them off the digi cam. For those of you who wondered my colors are all Sherwin Williams. The shutters are Exclusive Plum and the siding is Intuitive.

Beige or Taupe goes very well with Mauve, with cream accents. If you like, you can just compare paint colour cards at the store of similar colours to see the effect. Love mauve, my childhood bedroom was mauve. Good luck.

Thank you! So much great feedback. Sadly, the paint job is a necessity rather than just aesthetics -- paint on the back side is failing pretty badly & peeling off in layers. (After reading up on the paint forum, I think it was just too many layers of latex on top of old oil paint without adequate prep.) Maybe we will keep it close to current color. I'm not sure what color it is, but I'll have to stop by the BM store and pick up a tab for Briarwood. I think those color visualizers are just a bit off, at least on our monitor -- Down Pour is a very smurf-y blue on my screen. Luckily, SW store is right down the street. Of the SW colors, we liked Mineral Deposit -- gray, but not quite so dark. Johnmari, my wife said exactly that about warm trim looking bad with cool gray field color. I just want to get away from the current ultrawhite, just tone down a bit but not too much. Shutters? I think we will someday, after we've finished the essentials. Of course, being picky, I don't want to just screw aluminum shutters that don't match window size on there, so might be a while given that real shutters & hardware are pricey. The suggestion about doing the sash black is good--that could look really sharp and make the windows pop a bit more until we can dress it up a bit more with shutters. Absolutely agreed on the landscaping solutions. Could be more varied and it would add a lot. THANK YOU for all your suggestions, such a helpful group & nice little corner of the internet.

Thank you for the suggestions @ decoenthusiaste, @ Momofthree Ma and @ Beth H. We are on a limited budget, so we won't be able to replace the siding. Do either of you have suggestions on the best way to add window trim? Will we need to have someone remove part of the siding and re-flash the windows to do this Also, do you have any suggestions for what we could do with the steps? We don't have a budget to build a porch, but could make some minor mods to this structure. We will be adding some landscaping this fall.