Living Room Painting? (Don't tell Chris!)

I, in my general let's-paint-everything-because-I-can mode, decided that my living room paint color, tan, doesn't exactly jive smoothly with my kitchen color, black.  So, I now have gray swatches up on the wall because I feel like this would help it be more cohesive.

Living room now in all its tan glory

And here are some kitchen shots

I am thinking darker gray walls with white trim.  The trim part scares me a little bit because we painted the trim in our kitchen black and it is a royal pain in the neck.  Plus, I would be doing it in the fall/winter so I can't just open the doors and windows for air circulation.  I will be using low/no VOC paint and that will help, but still.  

Here are some inspiration pictures that I am drawing on.

I love how the white just pops in the room.  My white curtains will look a lot better behind a white couch if the walls were gray.  Although, I bought a stencil that I plan on doing to the curtains and that will totally change everything.  I've had it for 2 weeks but haven't found the time.  It will have to be done at night because I need to lay it out in the living room and that is the only time I can keep 5 kids off it!

And I plan on doing the hallway the same gray color.  Right now I am leaning towards Medium Gray or Seal Point in Ace Paint at Ace Hardware.  All of the paint sold at Ace Hardware is low/no VOC.  Here is the color swatch that I am looking at.  The two starred ones are what I am tying to decide between.  The top starred swatch is Seal Point, and the bottom one is Medium Gray.  I have had these up in my house for a week now and can't decide. I know most people would be like just pick one, but they both look different throughout the day and I am not sure which one to pick!  I plan on deciding by this weekend though.  In the end, I probably wouldn't be able to tell, and our local Ace doesn't do paint samples.  Boo.

Chris came home and bless his heart, said, "So, you thinking about painting again?"  And when I said yes, he didn't say a whole lot, but he also didn't say something along the lines of "that is such a dumb idea and you don't have time".  If he would have said that I would have been really irritated.  But he didn't, what a sweet man!  

The only thing I am afraid of is that the house is getting a little more modern then what I prefer.  I really like the nature look of wood pieced and pictures of nature, etc., stuff like that, but I do really love my black kitchen and so I am thinking of rolling with that for now.  

Here's an example of what I am talking about with the nature thing in my living room.

I am thinking I can still make it nature-ish.  Yes?  The skull on the bottom shelf is of a bear.  I don't know if it is one my dad caught or if he found it, but I remember that skull from when I was a little girl.  One time when I was home I asked if he had any skulls or antlers that I could have and he told me I could display it in my house.  I was so excited!  Must be a farm girl thing.  You can take the girl out of the farm, but not completely the farm out of the girl, or something like that!

And do you see on the top shelf the white lump?  Those are a model of my teeth.  I thought it would be neat to have to display so I called up a local dentist and told them I wanted a cast of my mouth, and they definitely thought it was weird, but said okay.  It cost $25, which was cheaper then what I was expecting it to be.  It's a little fragile though, there is a chip in one of the teeth :( so now it is up high.  And here's a close up of it, just for you!  My brother in law thought they were creepy.

Okay, this might be one of the longest posts in my life.  Time to wrap it up.