Did you put your profile together yourselves or hired a pro?

sugardumpling

I am viewing sample profiles.  I was wondering what you chose to do for your profile.  TIA!

Art Teacher

Our agency has a set way for you to put your profile together, so we did it ourselves.  It basically looks like a folder.  On the cover you pick out a picture of yourselves and add a Dear Expectant Mother letter.  On the inside, you add 3 or 4 pictures of yourself and sections such as "About Us," "Our Community", etc.

I have friends who just did more of a scrapbook style profile and they bought a digital scrapbooking program to make it.

 

bhead81

We did our own through mixbook. 

Dr.Loretta

We put ours together ourselves. For one, I had a blast doing it. And some people encourage you to do your own since a pro may not know you well enough to convey what you want.

dragossoul84

Our agency didnt allow us to use snapfish or mixbook it was supposed be more uniform with the other profiles. I used a professional her name was Kim Rowans I can give you website if you want to check it out. She was great and I love our profile. 

kekis

We are doing ours because I figure that we know ourselves better than anyone.  The agency we'll be working with doesn't have strict parameters on profiles but does have a few recommendations and a couple of items to include.

Ambie0611

We are putting ours together ourselves and I have been looking online to get an idea of what to include. I see a lot of people include a picture of the nursery. Should I do that? What do you think?

Dr.Loretta

Ambie0611:

We are putting ours together ourselves and I have been looking online to get an idea of what to include. I see a lot of people include a picture of the nursery. Should I do that? What do you think?

Our agency didn't require a nursery setup for our homestudy, and we didn't have one ready when we did our profile. Do you have someone in the process to give you feedback?

steph196

We made ours on our own in Pages on my Mac. I had it printed at Office Depot and I put the pages into presentation folders.

Ambie0611

Dr.Loretta:

Ambie0611:

We are putting ours together ourselves and I have been looking online to get an idea of what to include. I see a lot of people include a picture of the nursery. Should I do that? What do you think?

Our agency didn't require a nursery setup for our homestudy, and we didn't have one ready when we did our profile. Do you have someone in the process to give you feedback?

I can ask when we go to our first class next week. I am just trying to be as prepared as possible. I am sooo nervous. That is why I was looking up information, getting all of my stuff together, I think that would help my nervousness to just go ahead and start gathering everything I need. I know I am crazy, but I am just so excited and nervous. Did I mention I was nervous ? :P

pinkzebra

I made ours on Mixbook. When we did the first book, we didn't have the nursery completed yet so we didnt' include a picture. We updated our book right before we were placed with our daughter and we included a picture of the nursery at the request of our caseworker. 

dragossoul84

Agencies may have rules about nurseries in profiles. Mine did we couldn't include wedding photos, nursery photos or swim suit shots, I asked why they were saying that the birth mothers in general they tend to deal with do not like being reminded of weddings or nurseries because its a painful subject for them. I know other places encourage them so that maybe one thing you hold off on and ask them directly

inlovewithB

Having to be creative or doing anything artistic is like torture to me! I couldn't even decorate our house myself. I tried to work on ours for about 10 minutes before we decided to hire a pro. We used Joanna with Our Chosen Child.

silliestbunny

We did both.  I loved the creative spirit of my homespun versions. 
However, our adoption center started recommending a pro service and nearly all clients started using the pro service.  When that happened, we chose to use the pro since we wanted to have the same level of professionalism.

If you are intersted in a pro, I highly recommend Joanna at Our Chosen Child.  She is sincere, warm, and kind, and she does an outstanding job!

cogbot

We used shutterfly.

potatohead

My SIL did ours with Photoshop Elements, I believe.  She used some digital scrapbooking elements and made it look great!

Sunny1s

I'm into that kind of stuff so we just did it ourselves and had it printed.  I honestly cannot believe how much some of these professional websites charge you.  Ours was only to be 8 pages so it was easy enough for us to accomplish by the time you write what you want and put pictures in, it fills up very fast.

We did include a picture of a nursery in our online slideshow profile.  Our agency was not against it and I think that if you want to do it, it really does nothing more than show you are making a place for the baby.  I know our BM liked picturing where he would be.

alisonemma

Yes and no.  Our profile format was the same for everyone who goes through our agency, which I very much appreciated. I like things that are organized and prescribed, I guess.  I wrote the copy and provided the pictures, but everyone's layout is, for the most part, the same.  I thought that that gave a more even playing field too, as I am not very graphically creative (my strength is in writing).

We did get some of our photos taken by a professional friend of ours, and I believe that that helped us tremendously.  We used two of her photos (one for the cover page), and the others were from our daily lives.  We were picked the first time we were shown, which was about a month after our profile went live.