Create Mt. Lion Boot/Recovery/Clone disk

Back when I first got my iMac w/ Lion, I created a Clone + Recovery disk on a 16GB stick. The only apps I had added to the basic setup were my printer/scanner and Carbon Copy Cloner. No docs, pics etc had been added. Since upgrading to Mt. Lion, naturally there have been many apps added and of course all kinds of docs, pics, music, video etc. To make a clone/recovery disk for Mt Lion, would I literally need a disk as big as all that is used on my iMac's HDD (little less than 250GB), or could I create one with just my OS 10.81 + apps?

Which software do you intend to use to make the clone backup? Carbon Copy Cloner ($20) will clone both the Mountain Lion and Recovery partitions so you would need at least an external drive as large or larger than your internal hard drive.

Also, I would clone everything. CCC will do that automatically and at the same time keep the external backup synced with your internal drive. It also will render the backup bootable in case you need it to startup your Mac.

I currently use CC Clone to do a daily backup of whole computer each morning onto a WD 1 TB HDD. I was just wondering if I could make a secondary install item I could put on a mem stick that I could keep somewhere safe outside my house.

Yes, you sure can. Download the free Lion Disk Maker from here. Note - it will only work from the install download prior to installing it on your Mac. You can download Mountain Lion again for free if you have already paid for it.