Time Machine woes

Where to begin...Friday night I decided to look into the problem with my scanner. It's not something I use daily, but days/weeks earlier I had tried using Image Capture and go the error simply stating "An error occurred during scanning." After some investigation, I suspect the issue had to do with a recent OS X Software Update that affected some Epson printers and scanners (and possibly other manufacturers).

Looked high and low for a resolution and found something on the Apple Support Discussion that looked promising that suggested swapping out some Library files, all the while thinking that if I messed something up, Time Machine would save me. I followed the instructions and it didn't work. After all was said and done, I was still able to scan using Epson Scan so I decided I would put everything back the way it was before I started messing with things and attempted to restore my "Macintosh HD/Library" folder. Oops.

As it started to copy, I realized this was far more data than I really needed to restore so I opted to cancel copying. Again, oops.

Soon after I restarted my computer and to my horror a number of my settings were gone. The dock reverted back to the OS default apps and style as did the wallpaper. My bookmarks in Safari are gone (no big loss as I'm a Firefox guy), but worst of all, Thunderbird (my e-mail client of choice) is wiped clean. No accounts, no e-mail messages. Meanwhile, Firefox is still intact with its themes, bookmarks, ad cookies. Files and documents seem to be status quo.

I'd like to restore these things the simplest way possible. In lieu of that, I'd do a system restore. However, I cannot find the Snow Leopard disc that came with my MBP. I do have a retail copy of Snow Leopard that I used to upgrade my previous MB, but my MBP won't boot from it. Also, I external hard drive is partitioned. My Time Machine backups are in a partition 478 Gb (≈163 used, 315 available). I have a separate partition that I lob miscellaneous files in for archival use (160 Gb total, ≈15 used, 145 available). The current state of my Mac Hd is 198 Gb. What I'd like to do is create a bootable disc image in one of these partitions, so that I can boot from the hard drive and use Migration Assistant to do a full restore. What is the best way for me to get a bootable image to one of these partitions without erasing the entire partition or creating a partition.

Sorry for the length of my post. I'm hoping someone out there is reading this, shaking their head at my foolishness, and has an awesome solution for me. Thank so much!