Our family had very few, but very firm house rules. Mostly meant to keep the peace, once a rule was pronounced, it was set in stone. We’re all adults now and we STILL obey the house rules every time we visit home. I actually take great pleasure in invoking this rule even at age 30.
Yay for the FP!!!!!!! You totally deserve this for every post. I haven’t read one yet that I didn’t love.
Thank you, Miranda! I really appreciate your support!
that’s teh way it is for us too!… sadly i am second oldest but sometime si can weasel my way into the front seat! ;) I LOVE the pictures! They are super creative! how long does it take you to make one??
Thank you! It usually takes about 8-10 hours for one post, or 1-2 hours per panel. Each “scene” needs to be smaller than 8″x10″ because my scanner bed isn’t very big, so the paper dolls are usually between 2-3 inches.
Amazing! Great work here – especially considering the materials you used, there is such a fluid expression of emotions through them! Awesome post, thanks for sharing!
Thank you! As I gain experience with the paper, it becomes easier to handle as a medium. I really love making the illustrations.
This is the cutest thing ever! Congrats!
:D Thank you!
Oh, this is great, I love the art and thanks for the giggles! I have to facebook share this because I am second to the oldest of five sisters. Congrats on being Freshly Pressed!
Thank you for sharing it and yay! to meeting another person with 4 sisters!
I love the art pieces you created!
Umm, that house rule was a bit unfair, I’d say :D
hahaha, yes, terribly unfair. Thanks!
I love how our society has developed riding in the front seat as some sort of rite of passage for kids that is desired by each and every American child…this rule was highly unfair. One of my teachers made us choose project topics by birthday once…I’m the youngest so I was left with all the dinky monarchs to choose from that not even google knows about…this makes me happier to be an only child, though.
Oh, that is terrible!
YEEEESSSS! Congratulations! I just knew it was only a matter of time before I saw you appear on Freshly Pressed! :)
Thanks! It’s fun! Have you ever been on FP? If not, you should be! Yours is my favorite blog.
Aw sucks. Thank you, Nicki. Nope, I haven’t been on FP yet. (Sniff, sniff.) But I do love rooting for my blog friends who get there. Congrats again :) Well deserved.
That was supposed to be “shucks” :)
I was an only child and I still had to sit in the back. :-/
What?! That’s awful! (I get carsick, the back is torture!)
As the oldest child in my family, I like this rule. :) Very cute!
haha, thanks!
I’m the youngest of three, I would never get the seat…
But a nice clean way to solve the problem :)
A mother of 5 has to do a lot of creative problem-solving!
You’ve been Freshly Pressed! Many, many congrats, now we’ll have to share your beautiful illustrations with everyone! About time too ….
Ah, thank you! It’s so exciting, my very own 15 minutes!
This is super cute! I never understood the obsession with shotgun, though. Even when I ride with my friends I prefer the back. I always found it easier to sleep in the back..
I think, in my family at least, it was about getting to sit right next to the parent driving and feeling grown up. With so many kids, you kind of fought for one-on-one time with the parents and it was special :) Also, the back seat makes me barf (carsickness.)
Aaaaack!! I probably would have put a frog in the front seat. How many years did you have to wait to ride up front?
Wonderful art.
Congratulations on being Freshly pressed.
Thank you! I’m actually the eldest, so this rule was the BEST!
Nice funny post – every day problem in most homes !!!
Thanks! :D
Hahahahahaha.
I’m the second oldest of six; this sounds very very familiar. :-)
Cool! It’s good to hear from other people with big families!
This is so true about families. We usually fought over the “captain’s chairs” which were two chairs in our van before you reached the back bench. The two oldest (my brother and myself) always dominated when it came to getting those chairs.
Oh yes, we had those chairs in our van, too!
I love your post and blog, especially the costumes (dresses in your header and the coats in this post). Your creativity is amazing. Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed. Thoroughly deserved.
Ah, there are 5 girls and 1 boy. I am the eldest, so for a long time, I naturally had some seniority. But some of “going first” I didn’t want, first to go to high school, first to university, etc.
I seldom see them and one of them died. So when I see them the pecking order is forgotten. But it was forgotten…since our late teens.
Good thing, I’m over 50 and the youngest is 10 yrs. younger. We just joke-fight over what dish to order in the restaurant for a collective large meal. Then we decide in 2 min. and eat, laugh, catch up on news. I only see them once annually or less.
Like your felt stories. I’m sure you’ll do a little video clip one day if you haven’t already.
May your siblings be the best of friends….for life.
Thank you! I’m sorry for your loss, I can’t imagine how hard that must be.
very nice… I like it.. :)
Creative and unique… I think it’s a good idea to make the post looks interesting
Thanks! I love to make them :)
hhehehehe…. a simple idea but great for writing. good ilustration, awesome… Nice Post.
Thanks!!
This made my little, middle-sister heart smile! I am so good at wriggling my way into the front seat, it’s somewhat of a perverse talent I have (and one that I am strangely proud of!)
You are phenomenally talented – I will definitely be stopping by to read more of the sisters’ hilarious and beautiful escapades!
Thank you! I have lots more stories to tell :)
One of the only perks about being an only child is not having to call shotgun. That would just be superfluous, wouldn’t it.
I have an only child and I would probably laugh if she called shotgun… mostly because she’s 2.5.
Very cool post
Thanks for stopping by!
My pleasure! Stop by my blog sometime won’t you?
My kids are all adult now, and they still sometimes invoke the “oldest gets to ride in the front” rule, too. Sometimes it gets changed to “If I don’t want to ride in the front, I can choose whichever seat I like.” We have five kids, boys and girls, and have had an eight-seater van since the youngest started banging their heads on the ceiling in the “dicky seat” of the Ford station wagon.
In the pre-dishwasher days, another simple and fair rule was that parents washed up, kids dried in multiples of their age – Francis was 10 so he dried 10 items (or 20 depending on how many were there to be done) , Moya was 7 so she dried 7, Edward was 4 so he dried 4, and so on. Simple, logical, easily worked out, appears fair.
I think I would have got along well with your parents!
Ohh, I love the dish-washing system!
We modified it slightly as we went – plates, pots, etc are worth one, cutlery is worth half points. That dissuaded the smart-alec older kids!
My crazy brother-in-law had a different point value for just about every different size of washable item.. I did say he was crazy!
I love the scrap paper art you made to illustrate everything! That’s pretty awesome =)
Thank you! I really love making them.
i don’t have multiple kids yet, but i can only IMAGINE how insanely irritating it must be to sit there and listen to kids argue over who is sitting where. i am going to go nuts. this makes me want to go celibate right now. you have places to go, people to see, appointments to keep and all the majority of the car wants to talk about is who is going to sit where. scratch that, they want to talk about who is NOT going to sit where. in the middle, the dreaded torture seat. no relief from either side. thank god i’m the driver now. i am the middle child, but i’m the only boy, so we all had our places. i would pancake out like a golden retriever on a tile floor when i had to sit in the middle, that way NOBODY was happy. thank god i’ve grown up since then :)
Yeah, I definitely pity my parents a lot more now that I am a parent myself. When I look back on it, they were practically saints.
I’ve always felt very lucky to have the rights of the first born!
hahaha, true!
I love this, I’m the middle sister… There’s also a wine named “Middle Sister” Great job…funny
I’ve seen that wine! I wonder if it’s any good.
Great artwork! I used to have those fights with my brother all the time growing up about who got shotgun. Thanks for sharing!
:) Thank you!
[…] Belanger Smeltzer posted about “House Rule No 1″ in her blog. recently. It is a lovely blog, full of clever and creative collage. Check it […]
I wish that would be my house rule
Maybe when you get your own house, you can make it so.
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed! Hilarious post, as usual. :D
Thank you! :)
This is so cute! I love the illustrations! I have a new blog where I write short stories and post them (shaymackwriting.wordpress.com) Check it out if you want! Again, love your blog! :)
Thanks! I will check them out!
Cute illustrations! I was one of two, and somehow we figured out who got which back seat by ourselves with very little fighting. (There was a brief squabble over the middle seat once though – it had a much better view!)
That sounds lovely and peaceful.
‘No, that didn’t count it was only a 5 min drive’, aahh, memories. There was only my sister and I but still, a seat in the front is worth battling over. My kids try it too, but if the argument gets out of hand I just say ‘tough luck, everybody in the back’! I loved your pictures too, the popcorn, ha!
Congrats on being FP :)
Thanks!! :)
Love this post! Love the graphics…love all of it!! XOXO
Thanks, I appreciate it!
I love these illustrations they are hilarious! This post just reminds me of how great it is to be the eldest!
It IS pretty great to be the eldest! :D
This post is great! It reminded me of my house rules. The first was that both of my girls had to ride in the back seat, in their assigned seats. The other was that they both had assigned seats at the dining room table. It cut down on the fights and whining SO much!
We had assigned seats, too, and it did make a huge difference!
I`m Favor for the rules, why? Your guess is right,
I`m belong to the front seat too! he,he Thanks for sharing :)
Wow, funny post. I always got the front seat, and we never fought about it, that’s weird. I guess because my sister was almost 9 years younger so she was in car seats and it was just the norm. Seniority rules lol.
Oh my goodness, I loved this story. I have an older sister, and it seemed (still does in fact) that she gets whatever she wants and I have to play by the rules! Kind of unfair. But now that she’s at college it doesn’t really matter. And I love her anyway…. : )
Gorgeous pictures. My brother and I used to fight over the front seat but he’s more competitive than me so I’d give up…
Nice animation and pictures. I remember when growing up who got the front seat. We took turns between me and my brother. Now I love the front seat of driving a car.
Great art! Love it!
LOL. So true. The art’s pretty cool, it is hand drawn?
And please, check out my blog- http://zeworldmatters.wordpress.com/
I think it deserves to be looked at :)
Im the youngest child… I never got to ride shotgun with my sister around, and when she is in town, same rule applies!!
Hello, wonderful person! My maker is the ninth of ten children. Trial by seniority. Feel better! Love, Adie
My family had that rule! And as the middle child, I definitely hated it. Especially since I was only two years older than my sister which meant only two years of seniority front-seat riding.
My mom always said you need respect your elders, even if it is just a sibling. Congratulations on being freshly pressed!
The Middlest Sister 
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