Flan disasters

My pictures from dinner the other night are unattractive, it looks like I ate deranged macaroni and cheese. I didn't though, it was gemelli pasta with ricotta cheese, sage, and asparagus. It was pretty good. There won't be pictures though.
For dessert I made flan with pink grapefruit and mint syrup. It was my first time making flan, and I was confident at first, but then I thought it was going to be a disaster. This was a few nights ago, so I should blame it on the stress of finals, but it was really just me. First of all, I've never really mastered the trick of making caramel, I always got my little sister to help me with it before, but since she isn't here I had to do it on my own. I'm usually inclined to undercook it, and I remembered this and read the directions saying it should be a "deep amber color" so I was determined to do it right this time. Well, in my quest to get it cooked enough I actually overcooked it a little, and I was so flustered by that that I accidently used a non heat-proof spatula (in my defense, we recently acquired some silicone heat proof spatulas, and that is all I ever use now, so it didn't occur to me that we still has the old kind) to scrape the bowl, and of course that was a disaster as well. So, I was so surprised by the spatula melting that I touched the caramel on the spatula and a drop of it got stuck on my finger and just burned and burned until I was able to get my act together and fling it off into the sink. So, that part of the flan making experience was just not good, and I thought everything would be ruined, but I pressed on anyway. It was good thing I finished what I started, because the flans turned out really good. I really like the grapefruit mint syrup, it's a nice touch. This is what it ended up looking like in the end: