It's a Barbie World.

Let me preface this post by saying that I never owned one single Barbie doll growing up. Not that I wouldn't have loved to -- my mom got this notion in her head that having a Barbie doll might have made me feel pressure to look like Barbie, etc., which is actually kind of a funny thing since my parents weren't too strict on other things like that. Regardless, they still bought me this other doll from the Christian bookstore (I think her name was "Cindy" or something like that), and this doll technically was just a Barbie look-alike. Go figure. Not having my own Barbie dolls growing up didn't bother me too much, though, because I had plenty of little girlfriends that were all Barbie-d out, so I got plenty of time to play Barbies at their houses. Besides, as a parent, I know that usually the toys that my son doesn't have himself and only gets to play with at other kids' houses, those are the toys that he wouldn't get as many thrills from if he owned them as well. They just wouldn't be as exciting. So it worked.

All that to say that when I saw the Barbie post on the Hostess With the Mostess website, I thought it was too fun not to share. Mattel threw a big Barbie bash to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Barbie, and they spared no expense, as you can see if you click on the link and check it out.

When I was at Target this week, I must admit I did walk down the Barbie aisle -- I had told myself that if any of the $3 special-50th-anniversary Barbie dolls were still sitting there on the shelf, I would totally treat myself to my first ever Barbie doll. Alas, they had all been scooped up already.