Back To School Notebook Covers

With the kids going back to school next week, we've been spending a lot of time thinking about notebooks, pens, pencils, and budgets lately.

We are having a bit of a hard time going back and forth between the "cool" notebooks with all the characters and designs, and the cost of such simple, but expensive, additions to the supplies.  Why does adding a spiral or saying to a notebook cause it to almost double in price?  I don't get it.

So we ended up settling on getting the "boring" notebooks and spiral binders, but coming home and sprucing them up.

For the spiral binder, we came home and printed off some coloring pages for Mini Me to decorate and some cool "Magic" and "League of Legends" pictures for the Daredevil.  The Perfectionist wanted something a little more subtle and cool, so we designed up a few fun saying to add to his notebooks.

For the spiral notebooks, we used the Personalized Notebook tutorial that I showed you last year to replace the covers.  For the 3 ring notebook covers, we just printed off the sayings and pictures that we wanted and added them to the front pocket of the notebook.

It was pretty simple and added a little bit of "spice" to the school supplies without any real cost.

Here's a few designs that we made if you want to try it too.

What about you?  What are you doing to keep costs down this school year?  I'd love to hear your suggestions and comments.