Teal Pumpkin Project

This Halloween, FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education) is encouraging communities to start a new tradition that will help make this holiday season less scary for children with food allergies: the Teal Pumpkin Project. This campaign encourages people to raise awareness of food allergies by providing non-food treats for trick-or-treaters and painting a pumpkin teal - the color of food allergy awareness - to place in front of their house along with a free printable sign from FARE to indicate they have non-food treats available.

The Teal Pumpkin Project is designed to promote safety, inclusion and respect of individuals managing food allergies – and to keep Halloween a fun, positive experience for all.

Our 4 year old daughter has severe food allergies. You have probably seen us out and about with her service dog, Gator. He smells for dairy & soy proteins among other jobs. In the past fun childhood experiences like trick-or-treat have been forbidden as she cannot have dairy, soy, wheat, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, coconut or beef. And although it seems crazy, those 10 things are in almost everything - including play dough! This year we are excited to participate in the TEAL pumpkin project. You may have seen it on Facebook or on the news. Our house will have a TEAL painted pumpkin out front and we will be handing out glider planes, fake rhinestone rings, rubber duckies and some super annoying ghost whistles. We will give these treats to all trick-or-treaters, but if you know of an area child who also suffers from food allergies please let them know we are a TEAL pumpkin house and will be handing out toys for treats. We look forward to being able to participate in a safe way this year.

http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project

If you are a local family and don't have our address then message me and I can give it to you. 827 says we can't post it on the blog.