Ornament Review: Bake Shop - Noelville #2 - 2007 Hallmark Ornament

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Cute ornament that really lights up

Cons: Smaller than others in the series

The Bottom Line: 

Baked goods that light up

Must be back in Noelville

Yummy ornament

This Second Noelville Shop is Not Half Baked

Welcome back to Noelville, a town made entirely out of gingerbread houses.  That's the idea behind a fun ornament series from Hallmark, and Bake Shop was the second entry.

This ornament is a smaller than the first in the series, but it's still rich in detail.  The sides are brown gingerbread and completely smooth.  The corners are covered in pink frosting, and the pink frosting is also on the top of the roof.  This one even has white frosting on the shutters on the front windows.  I'm not completely sure what the shutters themselves are supposed to be made out of.

My guess is this is a bake shop because the rest of the decorations are baked goods.  We've got decorated cookies as the tiles on the roof.  A donut is the sign out front.  On one side is written 2007, the year the ornament first came out.  The other side says Bake Shop.  Finally, the bushes out front are roll cookies with Christmas tree shapes in the middle.

This shop looks good enough to eat.  If it weren't plastic, I probably would have eaten it by now, in fact.  About the only odd thing in the appearance is the roof of the building is slightly larger than the base, meaning the sides slop out.  After a minute or two, I get used to it, however.  The snow on the ground and roof is covered in glitter, and it seems to want to come off in my hands very easily, which is always a pet peeve.

What drew me to this series is the fact that these ornaments also light up.  There's a hole in the back you can use to stick a light bulb from a standard Christmas tree string into the ornament.  Once you do, you'll see that it really glows.  The doors and windows glow yellow.  The cookies on the roof light up.  And in my favorite touch, the trees in the shrub cookies also light up.

Since this ornament is a house, it sits on a nice, flat base, making displaying it on a shelf or table very easy.  The base also has the 2 in a Christmas tree that Hallmark uses for the second in their series.  I like to hang mine on my tree, so I slip a hanger through the small brass ring on the roof.  The ornament hangs straight, which in this kind of ornament is half the battle.  The other half is hanging it near enough a bulb that it will still hang straight when you hook it up to the string of lights.

The size is the only thing against this ornament, but that just means the bulb does a better job of lighting everything up.  Bake Shop is another great entry in a fun series.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Noelville series.

Original Price: $16.50