Have you heard of the Teal Pumpkin Project? Begun by FARE  (Food Allergy Research & Education) and in its third year, pumpkins painted a bluey-green teal indicate a house that hands out food-allergy-safe/non-food items on Halloween to trick-or-treaters.

This year, my house will be joining in. We will be handing out glow bracelets instead of candy, and we will display a teal pumpkin on our porch. I’ll add a photo here when we make it later this week.

My neighborhood is a Halloween mecca when, in addition to the thousands of kids under 15 who live here, kids from outside the neighborhood pour in by the busload and cars of visitors line the blocks.

Like most of our neighbors, we love this holiday and we all deck out our houses in spiderwebs and ghosts and stock up on treats for the 400-600 trick-or-treaters who will come by during the night.

Often the night is so busy that we sit on the porch for a few hours to hand out treats rather than opening and closing the door so frequently. It only ends when we run out of treats and turn out the porch light, usually at about 8 pm after around 500 trick-or-treaters.

One of our neighbors took a timelapse video last year which pretty much shows it all.

For the record, my kids are not happy about not handing out candy this year, even though they will each come home with pounds of candy from their own trick-or-treating efforts. In our house, we compromise on this holiday by confiscating everything containing food dyes but allowing the kids to keep the chocolate treats and, after the initial binge, they can enjoy one a day as a dessert until they are gone.

Between GMOs and high fructose corn syrup and other synthetic sweeteners, here’s what I think of most mainstream candy,

This year we will be giving out glow bracelets instead of candy and wishing everyone a Halloween safe from food allergies!