I do everything "in the browser" these days. No Photoshop, just straight HTML/CSS/JS in Sublime Text. That way the site starts to feel alive pretty quickly and then I just tweak stuff around until I'm happy with it.
Colours... Sometimes I use http://flatuicolors.com/ as a starting point and then tweak it from there.
Also keep looking around at stuff on Dribble/Behance/Pinterest for inspiration. Some good guys to follow on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/robklaiss/uiux/ http://www.pinterest.com/alexhyett/ui-ux-inspiration/ http://www.pinterest.com/wkk711/mobile-ui-ux/
Hope that's helpful.