If you are new to scrapbooking, this will hopefully be of benefit to you.   If you are totally new to scrapbooking, here is what I would suggest buying. This will make the fastest use of your time and make the best looking pages for the time you spend. I will break the items out into "must-haves" and logical add-ons.  Following all of that will be suggestions for lifebooks specifically.

MUST HAVES

1. album
2. personal trimmer (to crop unnecessary parts of the photo off)
3. adhesive (to adhere the photos to the page)
4. journaling pen (to add your thoughts and captions and who/what/where to the photos)

LOGICAL ADD-ONS

5. refill pages (the albums come with ten pages and ten page protectors)
6. refill page protectors
7. extender posts (to expand the spine of the album to allow for the additional pages -- you need three for a 12 x 12 album or two for smaller sizes)

LIFEBOOK-SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS
For pages specific to lifebooks, I'd suggest Beth O'Malley's guide to creating a lifebook. It is very helpful.  Here is the table of contents for her book. 

One additional excellent resource for those that adopt from China is the Chinese Lifebook Writing Guide written by Kay Graap.  Go here to view the guide, a table of contents and some sample sections of the book.

There are all sorts of products available pertaining to adoption and the adoption process (and also for international adoptions if that is your case). This would be a good place to start for just that!

If you need help with content for your lifebook pages, here is a link to the section of my web site that offers help in that regard: LifebookTips

I might also consider joining my Yahoo group, a place where lifebook content is discussed.  Visit that site's page at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrapandtell/

Let me know if there is any other way I can help!

Jennifer Demar
www.scrapandtell.com