Restoring from purple time machine

Hi,
I need help restoring a purple Time machine back up.
My computer froze so I turned it off. It then wouldn't turn on. It just displayed the grey spinning wheel. I took it into Apple and they inspected it and said that I needed a new cable inside the machine. They then put new software on the machine and said I could pull down my backups from Time machine on my harddrive.
When I went on the hardrive I couldn't use time machine as it would not pick up any of the backups. I then started a new user and went on migration assistant and it wouldn't find the backups. However, when the hardrive is plugged in I could view the backups but they are light purple and not grey.
I took the mac into apple and they manually transferred documents and email.
My main worry is that my mac holds loads of emails that are not on the server so they found these and put them into an IMPORT folder in the Inbox. I have then dragged these over to my mac.
However, I am missing pictures etc, and annoyingly my signatures on my email. They have made these folders visible on the backup folder using a tinker tool but when I go into them it says I do not have permission to view the folder and they have a red circular on them.
Is there no way I can access these light purple back ups to just get back to where my laptop was on my last backup (23rd Dec?).
All I want to do is have my mac back to the way it was on the 23rd as I have a lot of work info etc that I need in the same place.
Any help would be incredibly appreciated!
Kind Regards,
Tom
MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4). Time machine on Hard Drive

See section E.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

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