My rocknroll weekend and tornadoes

My weekend- Saturday morning i picked up my niece and went to garage sales. I totally scored on some vintage Christmas items!! I got that awesome Christmas tree that is narrow for a window sill from an estate sale. Then the next stop, I came across this box of vintage hand blown glass ornaments that are 2 layers in the box. Yall i got for 2$ on those ornaments.  I also grabbed some old silver items for my Steampunk party for Holliween.  I also bought a bumper boat raft that goes in the pool for 2$! It was originally 160$, then had a clearance sale price of 57$ from Macy's and i paid 2. Yay!! My nieces had fun playing with it on Memorial Day when they came over. I wish there would have been 2 of them. It does a good reverse and you can steer it. 

 The BFD concert was a long lineup of bands : The Dirty Nil, Glorious Sons, Bad Wolves, Thrice, LIVE, In this Moment, Seether, and Shinedown.  We missed the first 3 bands because Todd didn't want to go down there in the heat all day. I did want to see Bad Wolves but it was a good compromise because we still got to see 5 bands.  It was soooo fun!! We went to this event 3 years ago when Shinedown was headlining then.  I was not too familiar with Thrice but i ended up liking them. There were people that knew every word to their songs so they were popular.  Live was of course excellent and one of the main reasons i bought the tickets. That was my 3rd time to see them and i saw Ed Kowalcyk when he was solo.   In this Moment was a shocker. They were very much all about the theatrical side and WOW did they!! Truthfully, i wasn't a fan of them live but have since listened to them on Spotify and i like many of their songs. The singer is female and she's a screamer.
Seether was flipping AWESOME and i would definitely see them again !!  Shinedown never disappoints and they were the headliner for a reason. Great stage performance - lots of fire and lights, etc.  I just really enjoy them and pretty much like every song they do.  It was a great concert and i got my moneys worth!

Oh did i mention i got a tattoo our last day in Amsterdam? I got a raven for my mom. When she turned 50 she got a raven tattoo, i was going to do the same last year when i turned 50 but didn't quite make it.  I am so happy with it! 

Our gardenia bush that smells amazing the second you open the back door. I am so happy to have it! 

Yesterday, we were under Severe weather and tornado alerts in our area. My supervisor came running out of her office and told all of us to head home now because it was heading our way. Some funnels had already been seen and wasn't sure if they were going to touch down. A few minutes from home, the radio broadcast told exact times that the weather was hitting our area. It was 2:07 on my clock and the storm was going to be over our house at 2:20. The alert said clearly to Take Cover!! I rushed home and let dogs out of kennel and we ran outside in the rain so they could take potty break. I was yelling Hurry Hurry hurry!! Then we ran into house and i scooped them up and got into bathtub.  The dogs were so good and they could tell something was up. They didn't fuss and try to jump out .  Once it passed over- we had thunder and sideways rain, we got out.  Todd is in New York and Jersey this week on business. They too were under tornado watch. 

Everything is Ok at our house. Just debris and leaves to pick up but no damage. Unfortunately, the tornado hit down an hour east of us and tore things up pretty bad. They got hit last year too so its so sad.  I saw today that the US has had over 500 tornados in the last 30 days. yikes!! 

Stay safe!!

Castles and stuff

Hey my lovely peeps!! How is everyone? I didn't get to visit a single blog this week and i'm just skidding in on making my post for the week.  Its been crazy busy in graduation season. My stepdaughter graduated high school this past Wednesday night. I have a wedding and 2 more graduations to make in this next week. I am soooo ready for this long weekend!! We're chilling tonight and eating leftovers and watching Dateline. That's usually our Friday night routine and i'm more than Ok with it. Tomorrow we're going to a swimming party at some friends house and eating tacos so that makes me happy. Sunday, we're going to be at that all day music fest concert that i'm soooo excited about. The top 3 headliners are Live, Seether, and Shinedown. I know i mentioned recently in one of my posts.  Monday, chilling in our pool and my cousin and her family are hanging out with us. That's my weekend plans.  Do yall have anything fun planned?
I thought i would wrap up with more Amsterdam pictures.  On one of our day tours, we went to Haarlem which happens to be the original Harlem and its what ours in NYC is named after. Haarlem is also where Corrie Ten Boom hid Jews from the Nazis.  We didn't get to tour that but it was cool to see the building where it happened. There were some buildings that dated back to the 13th and the 14th century.  That blows my mind!! That's the kind of stuff we enjoyed seeing and experiencing while in a different country.
We also toured a castle called Kastle De Haar.  The original castle was around 1391 and it eventually burned down. It was rebuilt in 1892. It had a beautiful church on the property that we didn't get to tour but a wedding had just taken place there a few days prior.  How cool would that be?!!  I  have always wanted to visit a castle in Europe so i can scratch that off my bucket list.
So here are a lot of pictures.

Please be safe this Memorial Weekend.

Happy Memorial Day

Good morning yall! I hope and pray for a wonderful day - safe and sound. 

There will be no BBQ's today. Dallas is practically under water and we have 5 more days of rain in our forecast. 

We were invited to a friends house yesterday for a garage cookout and I took a dessert. I have found a Pinterest win!! I made a pistachio cream cheese dessert ball. Dang it was good yall! I served it with chocolate graham crackers.  You can't go wrong when butter , powdered sugar and cream cheese are involved. I added pecans on one side and shredded coconut on the other end. Delish!! 

Now for some Memorial Day memes: