"featured" in the homepage is missing

Hi I love the theme, but for some reason I cannot get the “featured” list under the scrolling Recent posts to populate. Is there something missing, as the demo shows it there, and i am assuming “featured” is just a custom renamed “recent posts” widget or maybe i’m going about this all wrong… If I set the home page as “static” the recent posts are just text no image, and the scrolling centerpiece is missing.

Here’s my site: http://www.mikeweitzner.com