xsl: render html tags within xml

hello,

i'm trying to render html tags that are inside xml nodes with xsl

example xml:
<blah>this is my node. <i>this is italics</i> this is <b>bold</b></blah>


so when i use:
<xsl:value-of select="."/> to pull the info from the <blah> node, the html is "ignored"

i've tried:
<xsl:output method="html" version="4.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" indent="yes"/>

at the start of the xslt file, but no use

i've also tried using cdata like so
<blah><![CDATA[this is my node. <i>this is italics</i> this is <b>bold</b>]]></blah>

but no use either, instead the "html tags" are displayed in the output on the web page so instead of italizing the text, i would see <i>this is italics</i> in IE

if anyone can help, please do

well, i guess i found the answer myself:

<xsl:value-of select="." disable-output-escaping="yes" />

althought this will only take affect on this <xsl:value of... />

also, for this to work, the text must be surrounded by <![CDATA[ ... ]]>
would anyone know of a way to apply disable-output-escaping="yes" throught the entire document?