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

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

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

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

Was this guy at your office's holiday party?No matter how large or small your company, most office holiday parties seem to have a few things in common: The guy who can't hold his liquor, the abusive and/or cheapskate boss, the pretty young thing who wears next to nothing, and a whole lot of awkward. We asked Yahoo! readers to share some of the worst things they've witnessed at their annual Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Festivus bash. Here's what they revealed:

Bosses behaving badly
"I loved the Christmas parties and loved my coworkers. Unfortunately, one year one of the big bosses got too tipsy. I had taken my mom with me because my BF got sick and the boss kept hitting on my mom in front of his wife and ended up grabbing my butt on the dance floor when my back was turned. Next day, I found out I wasn't the only one, and he had previously been banned from events for doing those things before." -- Stardust90710

Obviously inebriated
"I had to restrain an overly inebriated and overly excited long term temp co-worker as he tried to

What's in a name? And why is Bob crying?The big trend right now is to name newborns after a werewolf or a vampire, as in "Twilight." While Edward and Jacob aren't that out there, we can only imagine that a future Renesmee might wish for a baby-naming do-over. (Baby-naming remorse is a trend right now, too, according to one recent poll.)

But does your name really define who you are? Would you be any different if you had grown up being called something else?

Before I was born, my dad wanted to name me "Giselle." It's perfectly lovely -- his inspiration was a romantic ballet with the same name -- but can you imagine the nicknames I might have faced in high school in New Jersey in the 1980s? Exactly.

Shine Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Romolini was almost named Prudence. Senior editor and writer Piper Weiss would have been Dustin if she had been a boy. Our parenting editor, Jessica Ashley, was almost Kristen. Love and sex editor Sarah Beston was supposed to be Lyndsey. Pets editor Sarah D. Bunting says that her mother vetoed the

How bad does a book have to be to win the Worst Sex in Fiction award? Pretty bad.Sex in the shower can be a bit awkward. But when your paramour is also your parent, as in David Guterson's "Ed King," a modern-day adaptation of "Oedipus"? Awkward, cringe-inducing, and just plain terrible to read. That's what makes it the winner of the 2011 Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

"Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I'm not in the least bit surprised," Guterson said when he found out that he had won the 19th annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award, the dubious honor given out by a British literary magazine this week.

According to "Literary Review," the passage that won the judges hearts (and, possibly, required brain bleach) was this one:

... These sorts of gyrations and five-sense choreographies, with variations on Ed's main themes, played out episodically between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., when Diane said, "Let's shower."

In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap. After a while he shut his

The red areas are where people look the most. (Photo from Mashable.com)When people look at your Facebook profile, you'd think they'd be most interested in what you're doing and thinking -- the things you post in your status updates, the articles you link to, the pictures you post on your wall. But according to researchers, the thing on which their eyes really linger is your profile picture.

According to a study that EyeTrackShop conducted for Mashable, your old friends, new network contacts, your coworkers, and even potential employers spend the most time staring at your profile picture on Facebook. They take a look at the people you're friends with -- or their thumbnail photos, at any rate.

The study, which involve just 30 people (which means it's by no means definitive), used participants' webcams to track their eye movements every 10 seconds as they looked at profile pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, Pinterest, and other social media sites.

On Klout, Facebook, and StumbleUpon, the profile photo took priority.

Some people are so hard to buy presents for! And in this economy, breaking the bank in order to impress is pretty much out of the question. The Editors at Shine have weighed in with their favorite picks for $50 or less, and we've got everybody covered: teenagers, coworkers, foodies, guys, BFFs, pet lovers, and more. Take a look, and let us know what gifts you'd add to the list!

Also on Shine:

• The Yahoo! Shine Get It Guide
• Holiday gift guide under $100
• The ultimate food lovers gift guide
• Holiday gift guide: 8 stylish, eco-friendly gifts
• DIY holiday gifts from the grandkids
• What's the worst holiday gift you've ever gotten?