Start with a search on painting cabinets. This topic has been discussed to death and the ideas and answers are always the same.

The key to successfully painting cabinets to a durable finish, is preparation. You Can.Not.SKIP:
washing, (let them dry)
sanding, (wipe clean) ,
primer (I always use oil-based) and
the paint of your choice with a good brush (I always use Cabinet Coat from Inslx, now BM). .

I'm not going to repeat all the stuff someone else will, but I will say if you skip preparation, it doesn't matter what you put on them. Even wall paper (God forbid) would peel.

That said, take a breath. It's not that big a deal. After all, it's just paint. You don't even have to be creative. After all, you're not creating, you're just painting.

If blue speaks to you, go with it. Gray is soft and wonderful as long as you don't choose gun-metal gray. Whites can go together.

SO, I'm no help whatsoever, but welcome. The pros will jump in, give you a good handhold, then release you into the wild when you're ready...

Christy: Re: Hiring out the job. The problem is trying to find someone who really does this job, someone with patience. I spent a lot of money plastering an addition to my house. After the plaster cured for several weeks, the plasterer (hugely experienced--I suppose there is no other kind, these days) told me to tell the painter: Sand, wipe it down with a clean broom and vacuum. Then, prime with a specific primer. I repeated this mantra to the painter, who had worked for me before, multiple times. I came home from work and found the whole job done. Including two coats of glaze. Did you sand the walls? No. Did he use the primer I told him to buy? No. Within two weeks, the sofa backed up to the wall and SHEETS of paint came off the walls. He came back to do it again, peeling off the paint until he found some places where the paint stuck. Guess what. It is peeling--small area-- again. It is a very large room. I live on borrowed time. Even very good craftsmen want to cut corners. No one wants to do the cabinet painting work the way they should. You have to be in the place to make sure everything gets done by the book.

As others have said, prep, prep, and more prep, the paint is really nothing more than icing on the cake...

I agree with all the above comments. I'd also like to say that I think you're putting too much emphasis on the need to be creative in order to create a kitchen you love. I don't think so. You just need a vision and you seem to lack one now. Spend some time looking at kitchens like magazines, here, Houzz, and just plain google kitchens and look at images. Save every picture of a kitchen that speaks to you and makes your heart sing to look at it. Once you get a big pile of photos, sort through them and try to determine what features keep popping up over-and-over again in them. Narrow down your choices into a smaller pile. Keep doing this over and over until you have a small pile of photos that really excite you. Those can become your vision. Now you just have to recreate it in a way that makes sense for your space.

It doesn't help you to find out what specific blue someone else used. Lighting in your home, what direction it comes in through your windows, your latitude/longitude/altitude, other colors in your home, the colors right outside your windows, etc., all will create a different look to the color in your own kitchen.

So, instead, once you have found colors in your inspiration photos that you want to explore, go look at paint colors, pick a few that look like they might be the same as your inspiration photo. Buy several sample sized of a few different colors that might work, then bring them home and paint different boards with them. Then put the boards in your kitchen and see what they look like in different types of light. Only then will you begin to get a feeling for how that color will look in your kitchen. Once you've narrowed down to the color you think you want, paint a large board in just that color and, again, view it in different kinds of light over a period of time in your kitchen. If it sings to you in all lighting situations, go for it.

If you post photos of your kitchen here, you will probably get some great input. Good help with colors and such can also be found at the Home Decorating section. Don't stress about this. Have fun with it. I don't think anybody makes the best decisions when they're stressed and being stressed will make a somewhat challenging project even harder to accomplish.

So, really, try to enjoy the process. It can be as fun as enjoying the finished project.

I painted my cabinets a couple years ago. It was a lot of work but I enjoyed it and the end result was rewarding. I took the doors off (labeled them), wiped them down with TSP (I think that's what it's called), sanded them, wiped them again, and sanded again, all before priming. I used CabinetCoat as primer and did two coats. Then I did two coats with BM's Advanced paint (none of the paint I used was oil based, so no harsh smells and clean up was easy). I think they turned out great. I let the doors sit for a couple weeks before putting them back up. I attached a link to my blog I made that shows the products I used. I'll also post pics. Be sure to post some pics if you do paint them :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Products used

Here's the after pic. I picked a grayish color paint (BM's cumulus cloud).