Profile Question

sgb721

If you made a profile book, how did you do this?

I started compiling gone on Shutterfly (I'm actually pretty proud of it). I just figure I should wait to order it until the agency gives us the green light.

I tried to include lots of pictures of us with friends children and family etc. How do you know if it's too much? 

I guess I'm just nervous advertising ourselves as parents in a little book of with pictures. It's nerve racking. Imagine if every parent in the world had to do that, it might actually be scary LOL. 

Julie721

Did your agency give you a few to look over? I think that was the biggest help for us. Ours was a little different because it had to fit into a binder, but we did more pictures than explanations or descriptions. That was all included in our "dear BM" letter, and we found the ones with too much text to be overwhelming.

Our attitude was very much so "a picture is worth a thousand words" and I think we will do something similar when the time comes to update it for #2. The pictures probably tell more about your family than you think. All you want is for the book to reflect your life. If you guys are surrounded by family and friends with children, include that. If you like to travel, include pics of your adventures. The idea is for the BM to get an ACCURATE view of what life will be like for the child they are considering placing.

Sounds like you are on the right track, and I think it is hard for it to be "too much." Good luck! 

Dr.Loretta

We had a "class" with our SW. She showed us about 30 profiles from families in their program, all of whom had been matched. We also got guidelines, do's and don'ts, for what to put in there. We went over it once or twice with our SW before we had it formally printed.

We used mixbook (scrapblog at the time) and had it printed at Kinko's.

If you haven't gotten the green light yet, I'd just keep compiling and tweak if/when you get some guidance from them.

lafayettegirl

Definitely ask for some examples from your agency. Different agencies want different things. Our profile book contains our Dear BM letter and pictures.

We created it using the CraftArtist program, which we bought at Best Buy. I had them printed and coil bound at Staples, who has the best prices in our area. We tried using Shutterfly and some others, but could not get the pages designed the way we wanted them in the price range we were willing to pay and printed/delivered in the time frame we wanted. Using CraftArtist on our home computer allowed us to personalize the book a little more and print wherever and whenever we want. 

Our consultant asked us to put in a variety of pictures, including ones of us alone, with each other, with friends and family, with the children we spend time with and one picture each of the front and back of our house (making sure there were no signs of street #s or names). We started the book with the beginning of our letter and then put parts of the letter on different pages with corresponding pictures.

Have fun with it and put in pictures that describe who you really are - my DH does karate, so we put a picture of him in his uniform at a competition. I have danced for years, so I have a picture of me in one of my costumes from when I was younger. We have great shots from our wedding, at parties, making snow angels and raking leaves.

Remember - you are marketing yourselves, but you should also have fun making the book. We enjoyed going through old photos and then realized that we don't take nearly enough anymore!  

Allie-Jo

Our agency gave us A LOT of direction.  Pretty much mapped out the pages and what they should include, gave us feedback from BM/BP on what drew them to people or turned them off.  The content, number of pictures, and wording were our own, put they even helped me tweek some things I wasn't sure of.

They told us the first page just kinda an intro page, 2&3 should tell how we met, 4&5 introduces one of us separately and tells our hobbies, same with 6&7, 8&9 were our house, pictures, details, favorite things about it, 10&11 were our jobs, 12&13 were our pets, 14&15 was our extended family, 16 was pictures of some traveling we had done, 17 was about our church, 18&19 were more pics of us and thanking them for looking at our book, 20 we put our favorite quote and bible verse.

This is just what I did ^ loosely based on what layout they suggested, and they really liked it.  GL!!

missred75

It is really nerve-wracking. I agree. Our agency made our book for us, so we didn't have to worry about it too much. Just sent them our info and pictures. Some lovely ladies here were so nice to share their profiles with us, though, so we could see what they looked like.