Scrapbooks/Lifebooks

A conversation I have often with adoptive parents is in regards to the portfolio, or scrapbook, that they put together. I understand alot of anxiety goes into making this book, the parents are so afraid to miss something important, they want to show the birthmother they will be good and loving parents. In the end, what surprises them, is when they ask the birthmother why she chose them - it has nothing to do with this! Birthmothers already know that each and every book they look through is from a family that will be good and loving parents. That's the agency's job. They do the background checks, the interviews, read over the recommendation letters, and evaluate the adoptive parents. But all the checklists… [more]

I love the idea that a local birthmother shared with me about the scrapbook she and her daughter’s adoptive mother are building together. While many birthmothers or adoptive mothers create scrapbooks or lifebooks for their children individually, this process is unique and has created a way for the two mothers of this one little girl to bond. Monica* and her daughter’s adoptive mother, Kristy*, are creating their daughter’s (Jenifer) scrapbook/lifebook together. Monica and Kristy didn’t have a whole lot of time to get to know one another before Jenifer* was born as Monica didn’t decide to make an adoption plan until a week before Jenifer was born. They soon discovered though, that they both loved scrapbooking. Monica shared with Kristy that she really wanted to create some… [more]

Another therapeutic activity that is a personal favorite of mine is scrapbooking. I’ve written before about Charlie’s life book. Creating his life book was empowering, healing, and therapeutic for me. His life book contains pictures, information from my childhood, and other miscellaneous information about my side of his biological family history. When creating his life book, I found comfort in the fact that through the life book he would always have something tangible with him to remind me of my love for him, even though I wasn’t physically there at the moment. According to A. (Charlie’s adoptive mom) his life book is one of his most treasured possessions and he is very territorial about others looking at it. That makes the work… [more]

In a recent post, I introduced you to my efforts at digital scrapbooking. In this post, I will share some of my favorite digital scrapbooking websites and the programs I personally use in my own digital scrapbooks. Just like with old fashioned scrapbooking, digital pages are created by layering photos with backgrounds and embellishments. Many of the digital scrapbooking programs come with lots of backgrounds, embellishments, clip art, etc. that can be used to enhance your pages. These programs are not very expensive – my favorite is Creating Keepsakes and it was around thirty dollars. Hallmark and Scrapbook Factory also produce digital scrapbooking programs. These programs also come with pre-made pages that you can just add your photos… [more]

Digital scrapbooking is a new trend in the scrapbooking circles. Technical geeks like me love it! I’ve been digitally scrapbooking for about a year now and have come to prefer it over the old fashioned form of scrapbooking. I made Charlie’s lifebook (a page from the lifebook is the photo for this post) using digital scrapbooking software and don’t think I could have completed it as quickly as I did had I used the old fashioned method. Perhaps you want to make a scrapbnook full of milestones and pictures of your child for his/her birthmother or you want to create a lifebook for your child but the task just seems so time consuming and overwhelming. By creating your scrapbook digitally, you can… [more]

Back in November Christian Adoption Blogger, Laura Christanson, posted about a cool scrapbooking Contest. The deal was you were to make a scrapbooking layout on a way that scrapbooking has changed your life or that you have passed on a legacy. Well, you know how much I love Charlie’s life book and what a great thing I think it is, so I decided to enter the contest and make a layout about passing on my love and legacy to Charlie through his life book. I worked hard on my layout and poured lots of love into it too! I began by drawing it out on regular paper, getting my ideas down on paper is always the hard… [more]

I thought my lifebook series was complete, but a comment in one of the lifebooks posts got me to thinking about circumstances where a child’s birthmom might not be able to make a lifebook. Chances comment: I have also made one for my adopted son that I explain to him who these people are, and I have put pictures that I have (before he came to live with us), and as much of his family tree as possible. But I had just copied your post and I am going to send it to his b.mom and see if she would be interesting in making a book from her perspective. Perhaps a child’s birthmom is not involved or she is not interested in making a… [more]

While creating a lifebook for her birth daughter, my friend Brandy, recalls feeling that it was lacking something. After much thought, she decided to add quotes that she found meaningful all through out the pages of the lifebook. It turned out beautiful and Brandy has agreed to share some of those quotes with us. Maybe one or two will touch you and find their way inside the pages of your child’s lifebook.

• “One hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove or what kind of clothes I wore. All that will matter is that I made a difference in the life of a child." ~ Forrest Witcraff
• "Life is not measured by the

Now, that you know almost everything there probably is to know about creating a lifebook for your child from my previous posts, let me share a few resources and other ideas with you! I love scrapbooking websites. They can provide you with inspiration, great quotes, poems, layout ideas, etc! In searching, I found a lot of websites that have ideas for adoptive parents of children adopted internationally or sell products geared towards scrapbooks for internationally adopted children but unsurprisingly there is not very much information out there that is devoted to adoption scrapbooking from a birthmothers perspective so you’ll have to be creative and tweak things to fit your situation. Websites (the first two are adoption related and the others are just… [more]

Part 1 Part 2 When should I give my child the lifebook? Whenever you want! Some birthmothers begin them during pregnancy and give them to the adoptive parents upon placement. While others (like me) waited awhile to make them. Older birthmothers could also make one to give to their child upon reunification. No matter their age, a lifebook is something that will be treasured for years to come! What age level should I gear the lifebook towards? This is dependent upon the age you plan to give your lifebook to your child or his/her family. I didn’t complete mine until my son was 4 years old. I wrote it in a way that he could understand most of it now and not be babyish when he is a young man… [more]