Trying to backup iPhoto pics from Time Machine

Question

I need some serious help figuring out how to get my photos onto CDs for backup purposes.
BACKGROUND: My laptop is running out of space, causing programs to run slowly. The Mac Genius at the local Apple store recommended I clear up space by cleaning up my iPhoto library which has photos dating back several years. Because I have the entire hard drive backed up on my external hard drive and accessible through Time Machine, here is what I did:
1. Deleted all Events prior to 1/08, thus keeping only 2 years of photos on my laptop. As a result, the available memory was barely affected since--as I discovered--this only moved the photos to the iPhoto trash.
2. So I started "restoring" events one by one and moving them to a folder on my desktop so I could burn CDs as backup.
PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED:
1. All photo information (time & date stamp) has been lost in this process.
2. Restoring photos one album or event at a time is time consuming and causing photos to take up double the space! Running out of memory really fast!
So, I deleted all the photos (4,000 of them) from my iPhoto trash.
NEW PROBLEM: Yes, I can restore photos from the Time Machine (which means they import to today's iPhoto Library), but when I try to copy them from iPhoto into the desktop folder to burn a CD, the program tells me the photos have been deleted and they cannot be moved out of iPhoto!!!
Okay, so how do I create a CD backup of my photos? It's all well and good that I have these photos on an external hard drive, but how do I actually use them in the future? If I want to print out these photos or share them with others, how will I be able to actually "get them"???
Is there a way to burn a CD directly from Time Machine? Will it keep my photos in albums or events so as to easily sort them later?
Please help! I'm terrified I have lost 3 years of our family history because of this! Also, I cannot use my iMovie program at all because there is not enough memory available.

Answer 1

this only moved the photos to the iPhoto trash.
Didn't you use the iPhoto->Empty Trash menu option to remove the photos from the library and the hard drive? (Deleting more that about 50 at a time can cause iPhoto to freeze).
All photo information (time & date stamp) has been lost in this process
To keep the metadata and other information the photos have to be exported out of iPhoto with the options to "Include title and keywords" and Location Information".
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If you want to export directly to a CD try using iPhoto to Disk. It will keep titles and such but I'm not sure about other metadata. Otherwise export each Event to a folder and burn that folder to disk in the Finder.
You can recover some real estate on your boot drive by: using Monolingual to remove all of the language modules except English and American English. I freed up nearly 1 GB of space the first time I ran it. For optimum safety and performance at least 10 GB of free space (20GB if you use iDVD) should be available on the boot drive.
With the low cost of external FW hard drives you can add a second external HD to the mix and run your full library off of it. Then add a smaller library with just the photos you might want to take with you if you travel with your MBP. You can use the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager to copy albums or events between libraries and keep all metadata, Faces and Places intact.