Ornament Review: Season's Treatings #3 - Gingerbread House - 2011 Hallmark Ornament

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Fun colors, good idea

Cons: Hangs at an awkward angle; see through grid as base

The Bottom Line:
Making gingerbread

Is still a treat indeed but

Not best is series

Lots of Gingerbread Goodness

I can remember several years growing up making a Gingerbread House around Christmas time.  Not being very artistic, those houses weren't that great, but they were lots of fun.  And that fun is captured in the third entry of Hallmark's Season's Treatings series.

All the ornaments in this series are based around Christmas treats.  In this ornament, we have a small gingerbread house cooling on a rack.  It's actually fairly simple since it's just the walls and roof.  (Hey, maybe I built it.)  Okay, it does have a door and windows and small red decorations, so it's not quite that simple.  There's also white frosting on the corners and roof.  In front of the house, there's a gingerbread boy and girl as well as a star.  Finally, there's a bowl of powdered sugar and some teaspoons, one of which is filled with the sugar.  The sugar has glitter in it, and it really catches the light.  There's also a small amount of glitter on the house and the cookies, but if you hold the ornament by the sides, you won't get any on you.

All of that is on an ornament that is basically a square with two and a half inch sides, so you can imagine that all the individual pieces are quite small.  The house is only two inches high, for example.

Hallmark has released a couple different versions of this ornament, but this is the original.  It features lots of red and green.  The sugar is in a red bowl and the tiles on the roof are red.  The spoons are green, however.  So are the doors and windows.  It gives this ornament a very Christmassy feel.

The earlier ornaments in this series featured the year of release very prominently, and this one is no exception.  2011 is written on the front of the house right above the door.  There's also a 3 in a Christmas tree raised in the back of the ornament along with other copyright information.  It's very small, so you need good eyes to actually read it.

Since the cooling rack that forms the base of this ornament is flat, you can easily set it on any flat surface and display it that way.  For hanging purposes, there's a small brass ring on the roof of the house.  As with the others in the series, it hangs down at an angle, allowing you to see what is on the ornament better.  However, this one looks like it is hanging at a bit of an awkward angle, at least to me.  The others hang pretty much at 90 degrees, but this one is at 45 degrees, so it's not quite as easy to enjoy all the detail when it's hanging.

The other flaw this ornament has is the cooling rack itself.  Basically, what you've got is a see-through grid.  It's actually a little distracting to see what is behind the ornament come through.  Again, it takes the emphasis away from the ornament itself.

So far, I've loved the first two entries in the Season's Treatings series.  While 2011's Gingerbread House does have some flaws, I do still like it.  The third time isn't quite as charming, but it is still enjoyable.

And check out the rest of the Season's Treatings series.

Original Price: $9.95