Question about vegetable garden paths!

I have a question for you all about vegetable garden paths!

Under the cut you’ll see a lovely photoshop rendering of the layout of my garden. This is my first garden and I’ve got it all tilled up and we’re actually heading out side for a day of compost adding and fence building so we can start planting our little plants. As you can see, I have three beds, 4 feet wide, with 1 foot wide pathways in between each. I do not have raised beds this year, mostly due to not being able to afford the materials really and being that it’s my first garden, I didn’t want to get too perminant till I figured out I could and wanted to do this every year. I’m confident that I will, but I don’t want to get in over my head. My husband and I just bought our house earlier this year and it’s our first house, so we owned absolutely zero gardening tools. We didn’t even own a hose. So we’ve had to buy a lot of things, including a lawn mower, and I just didn’t have the extra funds to buy the materials to make raised beds. next year I will being doing that though!

So to my question. The pathways are both for me to haul stuff around the garden in and for me to kneel down or sit while weeding or taking care of my little plants. I’m stuck on what to make the path out of.

I bought some weed fabric to put down on the paths, but I’m not sure whether I should buy like concrete pathway pavers, brick, mulch, no idea. We have a short pathway that the previous owners put in going from our deck to our shed made out of these square concrete pieces that I had originally intended to copy in the garden, but that would be a whole large expense I think to buy enough to fill in the whole thing. But I’m not sure if mulch would be comfortable to kneel/sit on even if I had a knee pad (which I do). What’s the best solution for cost/comfort/function?

Thank you so much for any advice you might have!