Pre Baked Gingerbread Cookie kits and House

A picture of a ready to make Gingerbread House from the kit.
Gingerbread has been baked in Europe for centuries. In some places, it was a soft, delicately spiced cake; in others, a crisp, flat cookie, and in others, warm, thick, steamy-dark squares of "bread," sometimes served with a pitcher of lemon sauce or whipped cream. It was sometimes light, sometimes dark, sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, but it was almost always cut into shapes such as men, women, stars or animals, and colorfully decorated or stamped with a mold and dusted with white sugar to make the impression visible.


The term may be imprecise because in Medieval England gingerbread meant simply "preserved ginger" and was a corruption of the Old French gingebras, derived from the Latin name of the spice, Zingebar. It was only in the fifteenth century that the term came to be applied to a kind of cake made with treacle and flavored with ginger.

Designing your own gingerbread house or gingerbread man is something kid's will truly remember this Christmas season. So I bought this Gingerbread kit from Gourdo's in Trinoma mall to add to our Holiday Christmas Activities.

The kids Natalie, Justin, and Jordan were so exited to design the Gingerbread Man. When we opened the kit me and my sister tin2 also joined coz we had 8 cookies to design. And it did look a lot of fun adults would love to do with their kids.


And since it was Christmas everyone had a price after the contest. All the kids designed their Gingerbread man so temptingly delicious that my daugther Natalie was eating her Gingerbread even before the contest ended.

I would recommend that you add this to your activities next Christmas. There are also other kits they are selling in Gourdo's that you might want to buy. They also have Gingerbread Christmas tree kit that you can choose from aside from the Gingerbread Houses and the Gingerbread man. The kits costs around 500-750 pesos.

Reasons why Eating Chocolate is Good for the Heart

Almost everyone loves Chocolate. And not a lot of people now that Chocholate is actually a very Heart Healthy food. Chocolate is made from plants, which means it contains many of the health benefits of dark vegetables. These benefits are from flavonoids, which act as antioxidants. Antioxidants protect the body from aging caused by free radicals, which can cause damage that leads to heart disease. Dark chocolate contains a large number of antioxidants (nearly 8 times the number found in strawberries). Flavonoids also help relax blood pressure through the production of nitric oxide, and balance certain hormones in the body.

Dark chocolate is good for your heart. A small bar of it everyday can help keep your heart and cardiovascular system running well. Two heart health benefits of dark chocolate are:
Lower Blood Pressure: Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate everyday can reduce blood pressure in individuals with high blood pressure.
Lower Cholesterol: Dark chocolate has also been shown to reduce LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) by up to 10 percent.
Other Benefits of Dark Chocolate:
Chocolate also holds benefits apart from protecting your heart:
it tastes good
it stimulates endorphin production, which gives a feeling of pleasure
it contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant
it contains theobromine, caffeine and other substances which are stimulants
Doesn't Chocolate Have a lot of Fat?:
Here is some more good news -- some of the fats in chocolate do not impact your cholesterol. The fats in chocolate are 1/3 oleic acid, 1/3 stearic acid and 1/3 palmitic acid:
Oleic Acid is a healthy monounsaturated fat that is also found in olive oil.
Stearic Acid is a saturated fat but one which research is shows has a neutral effect on cholesterol. Palmitic Acid is also a saturated fat, one which raises cholesterol and heart disease risk.
That means only 1/3 of the fat in dark chocolate is bad for you.

Chocolate Tip 1 - Balance the Calories:
This information doesn't mean that you should eat a pound of chocolate a day. Chocolate is still a high-calorie, high-fat food. Most of the studies done used no more than 100 grams, or about 3.5 ounces, of dark chocolate a day to get the benefits.
One bar of dark chocolate has around 400 calories. If you eat half a bar of chocolate a day, you must balance those 200 calories by eating less of something else. Cut out other sweets or snacks and replace them with chocolate to keep your total calories the same.

Chocolate Tip 2 - Taste the Chocolate:
Chocolate is a complex food with over 300 compounds and chemicals in each bite. To really enjoy and appreciate chocolate, take the time to taste it. Professional chocolate tasters have developed a system for tasting chocolate that include assessing the appearance, smell, feel and taste of each piece.

Chocolate Tip 3 - Go for Dark Chocolate:
Dark chocolate has far more antioxidants than milk or white chocolate. These other two chocolates cannot make any health claims. Dark chocolate has 65 percent or higher cocoa content.
Chocolate Tip 4 - Skip the Nougat:
You should look for pure dark chocolate or dark chocolate with nuts, orange peel or other flavorings. Avoid anything with caramel, nougat or other fillings. These fillings are just adding sugar and fat which erase many of the benefits you get from eating the chocolate.
Chocolate Tip 5 - Avoid Milk:
It may taste good but some research shows that washing your chocolate down with a glass of milk could prevent the antioxidants being absorbed or used by your body.
Sources: Chocolate Manufacturers Association; Journal of the American Medical Association

Hongkong Disneyland Experience

This is a happy picture of Natalie and Justin in the beautiful Hongkong Disneyland Hotel Garden.

It was pretty cold when we arrived, it was winter during the 2nd week of December and this particular day there was an intense winter monsoon from China making the weather colder then ever that the coldness of the wind stings when it touches your skin. Even winter clothes is not enough to keep you warm if you're not used to the kind of weather.

It was quite tiring when we arrived coz initially i have reserved a room over the phone which did cost a lot for the long distance call to hongkong using my mobile phone. I have paid it using my credit card and to our surprise when we got there we didn't have any reservation. It's painstakingly hard to communicate if customer service of the hotel is not very fluent in English.

This is not really good for a big company not to have a record of your reservation when they've already charged your credit card, I already gave them a copy of the amount credited in my statement and they told i'll find out the next day if i really had a reservation coz they will talk to accounting.

So we had to wait for a room to become available around 3pm when we arrived 11am. So the children went out in the Garden, i had a bit of a headache coz we were already awake since 3am with almost no sleep to get to the airport for the flight early that morning and it was already a tiring day. The Hongkong International Airport  was so huge we had to ride a train going to the other side just to go to immigrations and get our luggage.

When we arrived the Disney princesses were at the lobby with a lot of people in lines taking pictures. No one was in line with Mulan so we easily got a picture taken with her.
We stayed at the hotel lobby restuarant for a while to eat lunch. It was a little expensive for a noodle soup that costs around 800 in Philippine pesos when converted but it was good and the serving was big so it would be wiser to just share it with the kids if you have kids with you coz they won't be able to finish it.

They had very beautiful chrismas designs all over the place. It looked so much different since the last time we went coz it was summer the first time we stayed at disneyland hotel. And Santa was also at the lobby so we had our picture taken with Santa too. And he does sound like the real santa when he laughs he does the hohohoho really well the disney way :) The music all over the place was also filled with the spirit of Christmas. They were playing "The Christmas Festival" which reminded me of my childhood coz i used to play that piece with my violin in an orchestra.
Eventually a little earlier than 3pm we got our rooms. It was smaller than our first room last summer with no balcony, to think rates during december is a lot higher than rates during summer because it's peak season.
By the way if you want to stay in their hotel it would be wise to get an annual pass so you get around 40-50% discount on room rates every Sunday to Thursday I used my annual pass and we got the room for around P8000 in Philippine Pesos or $1254 Hongkong Dollars for a Garden View room , this rate was half the price last summer. But it's still worth the price to experience Christmas in the Air in the cold weather in Hong Kongthe disney way :) There are also cheaper rooms in their other hotel the Disney Holywood Hotel if you want to save!

Yoville at Facebook :)

Yoville is a world similar to the SIMS, but you get to interact with other characters in the game real time online! You can buy new clothes for your character and stuff for you house or apartment. There are also real time events like parties and trading which you can join. I got to play this application from my facebook account where my sister invited me to join.

This is my starter apartment in Yoville. I got new stuff today like my heart shaped rug and Girly Girl Furniture, flowers, and plant.

I wanted to buy more stuff but i didn't have enough budget to do so.

To able to buy furniture you also need to use coins which you earn in the game.

This is a picture of the Widget Factory where people in Yoville work to earn money. You can earn around 200 coins every 6 hours by working in the factory.

And to my surprise you can actually buy quick coins in the game using Paypal or your credit card, thru SPARECHANGE and SOCIAL GOLD. And it's expensive around 50 coins for $1 where you can only buy a virtual plant in the game for that amount. That's a fast way to earn money for these companies where you exchange real money for virtual money which you spend for virtual stuff you don't really use in real life for virtual computer characters. I might sell my coins at a lower price to other interested players in yoville to earn real US dollars. LOL

You also earn by inviting more friends to Join Yoville.

Well i'd say it's fun playing it. You also get to meet different personalities in real life. This is a picture of the night club where people hang out and chat with each other.

I just joined a few hours ago. I met nice and mean people. There were nice ones who gave me free gifts. And i also got a water bomb splashed in my face by a mean character in the game. Well i splashed the water bomb back :) LOL.

I would say it's a fun addicting game afterall. But i love the Neopets and SIMS better. :)