This blog is my attempt to document our busy but BLESSED lives raising and educating our children for His glory. A child of God, wife to one, and mom to 6 fabulous kids. We are in our 16th year of homeschooling using a Classical ~ Literature based approach.

Come along for the good, the bad & the ugly.



Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Back to School Blog Hop ~ School Supplies

Do you know what I love most about Back to School time? Yes, you guessed it!

School Supplies


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While I don't actually *need* any school supplies this year besides replinshing my stash of  spiral notebooks and blank top handwriting books I still love to browse the aisles of all the stores and touch and feel everything. Yea, that may sound weird, but boy is it relaxing to window shop. Today I want to share with you a few of my favorite most used everyday school supplies for our homeschool, so let's get to it!

***the only affiliate link is for the Free month of Instant Ink. All other links are just for reference**

1. Printer ~ Hands down the most used item in my homeschool, besides my laminator, is my printer. This past Mother's Day the kids and hubby upgraded me from my old beloved HP Officejet 8600 series to the primo HP Officejet Pro 8730. I LOVE this printer! It's sleek, fast, and prints double sided like a pro. Well, I guess it is a Pro :-) With my old printer I use to worry about ink and even used generic because it was more affordable for my printing needs but now I have HP Instant Ink and it is a lifesaver! No more worrying about running out of ink because they deliver it right to my mailbox. I have the $9.99 plan that includes 300 pages per month. Don't worry if you go over your page limit, adding 25 pages is just $1.00. That is a steal! Normally, I imagine I would be fine with printing 300 pages, but with back to school prep I have gone over that amount. But you know what my bill is way less that the cost of just 1 cartridge of black ink so it's win-win for me! Guess what!? Right now YOU can get one month for free by signing up for Instant Ink yourself. Just click this link before September 30th and you will get 1 month FREE. In return, I get free ink too and Free is good!

2. Laminator ~ My lamination habit goes hand-in-hand with my printing. I am always printing activities for my kids to use. I use the Scotch laminator and laminating sheets weekly. Sundays are my heavy lamination days. This lamintor heats up really fast and does a super job. I have never had any trouble with it.

3. Binding machine ~ Now you didn't think I could print and laminate without binding did you? I love making spiral notebooks for keeping things nice and neat and this binding machine does the job. It's so easy to use and the end result is a perfect little notebook. I like to use printable assignment sheets for my students and this machine helps me do so.


4. External Hard drive ~ A few years ago I had catastrophic hard drive failure. It was an old external hard drive that my hubby had passed to me. It was a horrible experience and I shed a lot of tears over the memories and work that I had on that hard drive. Thankfully, I was able to get some of the digital curriculum I had purchased back by finding emails with purchase receipts, but my digital photos are only memories now.  This hard drive is a biggie at 2TB and I actually keep a back up to this back up because I don't want to experience another failure again.

5. Prismacolor colored pencils ~ These are our favorite colored pencils hands-down. They color beautifully and we love them! Each of my girls has a tin set with 24-72 pencils depending on their age and usage for their notebooking needs. I got this set for Christmas last year, I love the color options!

6. Ink Pens ~ Zebra Sarasa  and Pentel EnerGelX pens are my new favorite pens. 0.5 is my favorite tip as it provides a clean, sharp print. Tomorrow I will tell you how I use these to color-code my planning with my Apologia Ultimate Homeschool Planner.

I would love to hear about your favorite school supplies so leave me a message below. See what my CrewMates love by clicking the banner below.

Back to Homeschool Annual Blog Hop - 2017
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