Featured boxes option visible yes/no

[newshoremedia]

Hi,

I've added some additional "featured boxes" to the three default ones on the homepage – no problem there, everything works fine.

But now I want to give the user the possibility to choose for every box wether or not it should be visible on the homepage.

I've added

'featured_top_left_visible' => 1

to the $defaults array in theme-options.php. Then I added a checkbox to the "postbox" with

<p>Show box?<br/><input type="checkbox" name="<?php echo $settings; ?>[featured_top_left_visible]" value="<?php echo get_theme_mod('featured_top_left_visible'); ?>"
				<?php if(get_theme_mod('featured_top_left_visible')) : ?>checked="checked"<?php endif; ?>><?php echo get_theme_mod('featured_top_left_visible'); ?> </p>

When I reset the default settings the box is checked (as should be) and get_theme_mod('featured_top_left_visible') is 1. But once I unchecked the box the first time the box stays unchecked and get_theme_mod('featured_top_left_visible') stays empty, no matter if the checkbox is checked or not (of course I click 'save settings' every time).

It seems that the value is somehow erased from the database once I uncheck the checkbox. Any hints or ideas?

Thanks