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Now my players haven't complained about our last few session, but I wanted to make sure that I'm not being a jerk to them. I always plan for multiple ways for them to succeed or get passed obstacles. And if they ever come up with something more innovative than "I use diplomacy against the lock" I usually say that it works. The party is 4 members lvl 7, missing their leader for the past 2. The party for these two sessions were an Eladrin Warlock, Elf Warlock, Minotaur Fighter, and Elf Rogue.

Possible Jerk moment number one:
So two sessions ago they are on their way to investigate a wind temple. They climbed up the side of a mountain to get there. On their way up they discovered a tunnel, but overlooked it to get higher on the mountain(it was actually a secret entrance to the temple bypassing the fog elemental). When they got to the temple they discovered it was surrounded by a giant fog cloud. They did not know that the wind temple is protected by a Fog Elemental.

The fog elemental was given two different abilities:

• If someone walked into it without stopping they would find that they walk out a few feet away from the place they entered.
• If someone walked in and stopped they would be pushed out.

One thing that I'd flag in those descriptions is the repeated instances of, "They could have solved this if they'd used the right artifact in their inventory!"

  It sounds like you might be relying a little too much on this concept. It works for some types of games (use Inventory item X to bypass obstacle Y), but D&D isn't one of them.

First Case : definitely far too easy on them.
If they are getting frustrated by puzzles / lack of progress, you can have the Fog Elemental attack them first.
Turning a puzzle into a combat is an almost surefire way to reduce the amount of boredom.
Don't rely on Players figuring a way out. Even a party of ingenius players have good and bad days.
eg. A Skill Challenge is going nowhere, FAST. Say it involves getting past a locked door.
Have an alarm goes off, a bunch of Guards come over and beat on the Players.
One of them has the key. Done Deal.

Generally, to get past the frustrating with the blindingly obvious, it should be something that you can just mention to them across the table, like "Do remember that there's a door leading inside" or "Please note that this is a port-city and there are probably ships that can sail across the sea." or "As mentioned earlier, there's a cave entrance in the mountainside.", don't count on it to move things forward when Players are getting frustrated.

Second Case :"Game mechanics wise about 3 turns until completion" - if the Players did not know this, you could have extended it slightly.

However, in this case I think the fight was fairly balanced, especially since they only needed to hit her to get a chance to disrupt the Ritual.
You can add clues like "You hear disembodied words being chanted from the air around you as you fight."
The Minions are not overly powerful, in fact in 2 rounds they should have been done with the battle, especially since they pushed the Guardian (Elite) into a 100' plunge. That's an Encounter for 3 characters and they were fielding 4.

In any case, I assume the Giant Air Elemental wasn't too strong as it wasn't a TPK. Given that as well, you're not harsh at all.
In fact a little lenient - I would probably have let the GAE tear a few Heroes down and then leave to terrorise whatever faction / people they were trying to serve, thus affect their reward and reputation. Alternatively, simply really nasty buffs and attacks after being Bloodied.

What might be unfair is IF they spotted her and simply couldn't hit her (and disrupt) because she was invisible, giving them a -5 to Hit. You could provide her to be blurred (Partial Concealment) after one party member notices her.

That was what my DM gave us when we were a Level 12 party of 4 going into a fight with TWO Solos ( we didn't know it was 2 Solos )
One of them was an invisible Demon and had At Will Dominate (Save Ends). When Bloodied he can do it Twice per Turn. It targets Will and both our 1 Defender and 1 Striker in the party has low Will. He always went for one, then the other, and only targeted the rest when the other two were already Dominated.
The other was a Dragon with standard Dragon attacks, and could perform 4 Attacks (3 Claws,1 Bite that deals ongoing 5) as a single Standard Action.
Before the fight started, he dropped us an unavoidable trap that all reduced our HP by... hmm.. 48 or so? We were all bloodied before the Dragon appeared.
Fortunately, at least once we managed to detect the Demon, he was considered Partially Concealed instead of Fully Concealed.
One of the most memorable Encounters for me, EVER
Perhaps a little Harsh, but hugely Memorable. And yes, that's what makes the game for me, and might make the game for your Players!