1 and 2: I cannot stress this enough. I do not consider myself a master homebrewer by any means, but even when I go on the recipe forum here, it bothers me when I see a planned recipe with 8 grains for a simple ale. I personally try to avoid going over 4 kinds of grains for just about all of my brews. This isn't a hard rule, but with a base grain, a helper base (using a darker base grain or wheat/rye), a specialty, and then a crystal, you can cover just about every flavor you need along with mashing techniques. I've said it before: it seems like people rely too heavily on ingredients and don't think enough about their process.
3: I've moved to using WLP007 as my go to ale yeast. Got bored of Chico quickly. But normally I switch between yeasts for most of my beers (wish WLP860 was year round, it would probably be my lager yeast, use 3711 and 3724 for different saisons, etc).
5: my rule is to make a good example of a standard beer style before ever adding weird things (also I am not into too many weird ingredients in my beer anyways). Though your story reminds me of a friend of mine, his first batch was a normal pale ale, his second was a lemon-lime wheat that... wasn't good.
