As some of you may know, my stamping room is in the basement.  Emma, my Golden Retriever always comes downstairs and stamps with me.  Well, she really just lays in her bed at my feet while I stamp but we still always do it together.  A month ago, Emma refused to stay in the basement.  She would run down the stairs and then run right back upstairs and hide in the bathroom.  This was really strange behavior because she never hung out in the bathroom before.  No amount of coaxing would convince her to lie down on her bed in the basement.  It even got to the point where she refused to come down at all.  As soon as I started to go down the stairs, she would run to the bathroom and lay down.

After a couple of weeks of this, some friends of mine came by.  Usually when they stop by, Emma goes crazy and is so excited to see them.  This time she just lay in the bathroom.  What?  One of them mentioned that dogs are very sensitive and can often feel spirits and she wondered if there was a spirit in the basement.  She also told me that she can sense and sometimes see spirits.  Now I do have to say that I do believe in spirits but I wasn’t so sure there was one in my basement.  In any case this women went downstairs and said she could definitely feel the spirit.  She said it was a male but it was not evil.  She (and a bunch of other people) told me I needed to go buy some white sage, open the doors, light the sage and ask the spirit (calmly but firmly) to leave.  They also said it did not hurt if you said the Lord’s Prayer and had hymns playing while doing this.  There is a local store that sells white sage so I bought some.  Then I found a YouTube video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Messiah.  I played the video while walking around the basement with the burning sage.  I  had to do this for 3 days.  Now Rob, my husband, would come home from work and just roll his eyes at me.  I figured it couldn’t hurt.  All I knew was that Emma was afraid of something in the basement.

The next week, the woman who can sense spirits came back and said the spirit was gone.  No one told Emma this though.  She still refused to come down to the basement and would still go right to the bathroom and lay down as soon as I opened the door.

Well guess what!  I was down in the basement today and Emma came down.   She ran right back up though.  Ten minutes later she came down again and lay by the stairs.  Fifteen minutes after that, I looked down and here she is in her bed!

Happy Watercolor is a stamp set that is in the Occasions Catalog and is not being carried over to the new Annual Catalog.  I am very sad about this because I really like this set.  I made this simple and easy one layer card using it.  I love the sentiment that says “you make me happy”.  One layer cards are so easy and great to make when you are in a hurry.  I think some of them are as pretty as cards with lots of layers.  You can impress your friends with a homemade card and they don’t need to know it only took you 5 minutes or less to make.  You can still purchase this set until June 1st when that catalog retires.

Emma, you make me happy!