Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

More than 150 contestants from around the country gathered at the Grove Park Inn in Ashville, North Carolina, last month for the National Gingerbread House Competition. Their houses -- some of which aren't houses at all, but complicated dioramas or elegant sculptures -- can take hundreds of hours to create and must be made entirely out of edible ingredients and contain at least 75 percent gingerbread. (The judges even drill into them with power tools to make sure nothing non-edible is hiding inside, a step that we're sure must leave some bakers in tears.)

Ashley Howard's grand-prize winning gingerbread house.Ashley Howard of Winter Springs, Florida, took home the grand prize this year for her "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" gingerbread house, which featured fully furnished rooms, a gum-paste railing, and a tiny claw-footed bathtub filled with candy bubbles. Her biggest challenge? "The shoe has no seams -- it's all one solid piece," she told Allison Fishman of Yahoo!'s "Blue Ribbon Hunters." Usually, gingerbread

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Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen is hoping to have a ripple effect on the world at large. "My personal passion is inspiring, educating, and empowering others to make the most of their giving," she said in an interview with Yahoo! Shine. "As philanthropists, the most powerful legacy we can create is one that keeps on giving."

The author of the New York Times bestselling book "Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World," Arrillaga-Andreessen grew up in a family of philanthropists. "My own first inspiration came from my family, and in particular my mother," she writes in her book. "Frances Arrillaga was my best friend, my mentor, my soul mate."

Her mother sat on several non-profit boards, co-founded two nonprofits and ran the family foundation she and Arrillaga-Andreessen's father created, all while raising a family of her own, and her illness and death in 1995 gave Arrillaga-Andreessen a new sense of purpose in life. "I saw her purpose, her passion, and her peace," Arrillaga-Andreessen

Read More »from Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and "Giving 2.0": How to Give More with Less

Retail sales managers are among those who get paid the least for working the longest hours.Feel like your job just doesn't pay you enough? Most people in the United States work an average of 2,000 hours per year (about 40 hours a week) and those who are required to put in extra hours are usually compensated well for their time. But according to research by 24/7 Wall Street, seven of the 800 job categories tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics require workers to spend more than 40 hours a week on the job -- yet pay less than the national average of about $40,000 per year.

• The Best and Worst Jobs in 2011

"These jobs have longer hours because they tend to require prolonged shifts and because the industry does not observe regular working hours," Michael B. Sauter and Charles B. Stockdale report.

None of the jobs require a college degree, and most of them are in male-dominated fields. But a couple of the jobs stand out, especially during the holiday season: emergency medical personnel and retail sales managers.

First-line supervisors and managers are the ones to whom

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Is crying it out hurting your child?If the link between parent and child is strong enough that kids can "catch" their parents' stress, it may stand to reason that babies crave the physical connection that comes with a cuddle. It's something that plenty of parents are more than happy to provide during the day but, when it comes to bedtime, the modern emphasis has been on teaching good sleep habits -- and giving mom and dad a break.

Most sleep-deprived parents get to the point where they're willing to try almost anything in order to get a good night's rest. While some decry it as cruel, others have had success with the "cry it out" method -- teaching babies to "self-soothe" by letting their nighttime crying go unanswered.

But is "crying it out" about establishing independence? Or is it just a way of making those early years easier for parents?

In an article published this week in Psychology Today, one researcher says that crying it out could be dangerous for children, leading to a lifetime of harm.

"A crying baby in

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Time Magazine's 2011 Person of the Year is In recognition of uprisings the world over, Time magazine has named "The Protester" as its Person of the Year for 2011.

The illustration on the cover indicates that they're not honoring any single movement. It reads: "From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow." Time's protester sports both a knit cap and a niqab-like face covering; there's no way to tell if it's a man or a woman. He or she stands before a blood-red backdrop of people half in shadow and crowded together, holding protest signs, some with mouths covers, others contorted.

"These are folks who are changing history already and will change the future," Time magazine editor Richard Stengel said on NBC's "The Today Show." "There was a lot of consensus among our people, our correspondents and editors. People felt that this was the best choice, the most serious choice, so it actually felt right, and good."

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Apple innovator Steve Jobs, and Admiral William McRaven, who led

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The grand prize winner, by Ashley Howard of Winter Springs, Florida. (Photo: romanticasheville.com)More than 150 contestants from around the country gathered at the Grove Park Inn in Ashville, North Carolina, last month for the National Gingerbread House Competition. Their houses -- some of which aren't houses at all, but complicated dioramas or elegant sculptures -- can take hundreds of hours to create and must be made entirely out of edible ingredients and contain at least 75 percent gingerbread. (The judges even drill into them with power tools to make sure nothing non-edible is hiding inside, a necessary step that we're sure must leave some bakers in tears.)

Ashley Howard of Winter Springs, Florida, took home the grand prize this year for her "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" gingerbread house, which featured fully furnished rooms, a gum-paste railing, and a tiny claw-footed bathtub filled with candy bubbles. Her biggest challenge? "The shoe has no seams -- it's all one solid piece." Usually, gingerbread houses are made from flat slabs of the cookie, glued together

Read More »from National Gingerbread House Competition: Amazing, Edible Works of Art

Bill and Kathy Johnson, before he went to New Zealand. What would you do if you found out your husband had donated sperm without telling you? (Photo from Billjohnson.org)The Bill Johnson that people back home knew was a conservative Christian politician, a beloved husband and stepfather, a high-ranking Alabama government official with an eye for economic development who was working with a disaster-relief company in Christchurch, New Zealand.

People in Christchurch, however, knew him as "chchbill," a very willing sperm donor who didn't wear a wedding ring and said his current relationship "wasn't an issue." Of the nine women the former anti-gay-marriage politician has helped, at least three are pregnant -- including a lesbian couple, The New Zealand Herald reported. And until last weekend, his wife had no idea.

While the Christchurch mothers-to-be call his donations "a Godsend," his wife of nearly eight years calls them "the utmost of betrayal," "irresponsible" and "selfish."

"I am heartbroken that nearly eight years into a wonderful marriage, he has chosen to turn to other women to provide what I can't," Kathy Johnson told the Herald. "I didn't know

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The 2011 official White House Christmas Tree.The White House has been decking the halls for Christmas since the mid 1850s, when President Franklin Pierce first brought a tree indoors for the holidays. In the 1890s, First Lady Caroline Harrison helped decorate that year's tree, and a tradition was born.

The White House Christmas tree (in spite of the rumors, there are no generic "holiday" trees here) became official in 1929, during the Hoover administration, but it wasn't until the Kennedy administration that first ladies were charged with choosing an official decorating theme.

There's been a bit of controversy to go with all of the celebration: In 1899, Americans criticized President William McKinley for even having a tree, saying that it was "un-American" given the tradition's German origins. (The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that the letters protesting the government's "Christmas tree habit" also called it "arboreal infanticide.") In 1972, President Richard Nixon fanned the flames by using the atomic symbol of peace as a

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