Let them know you're home.

A little glowing pumpkin, shaped like a heart, for your lawn or your front door. It tells the kids coming down your street that your lights are on and there's candy at the door. A dollar from every one goes to children's hospitals.

Get one in 2027

Why

There's always a house you don't go to.

I was out trick or treating with my kids when I remembered something I hadn't thought about in about thirty years.

You come to a house where the lights are low, or the curtains are drawn, or the walk up to the door is dark. You stand at the end of the driveway for a second trying to work out if anyone's in. And then you don't bother, and you move on to the next one.

Half the time there's someone inside who would have loved to answer. Somebody older, maybe, who can't get out to put decorations up any more. A dark porch says stay away whether you mean it that way or not.

It's worse in an apartment. Forty identical doors down a hallway and no way at all to tell.

So I made this.

Two of them

One for a lawn, one for a door.

Not everyone has a lawn, and if you live in an apartment you already know the problem is worse in there.

The Lawn Heart

12 inches · under $10

A wire stake pushes into the grass. Built to sit outside for the whole month in whatever the weather decides to do.

The Door Heart

7 inches · under $7

Two magnets hold it onto a steel door, and there's a sticky strip in the box if yours is wood. Comes off clean in November.

The dollar

Some of you will remember the little orange box.

If you grew up in Canada you probably carried one. A UNICEF box on a string round your neck, and people dropped their change in after they'd given you a chocolate bar. It ran for about fifty years and brought in something like three million dollars a year.

It stopped in 2006. Counting all that change ended up costing more than the change was worth.

Nothing took its place. Halloween is the one night a year the whole neighbourhood knocks on each other's doors, and there's nothing attached to it any more.

So a dollar from every Pumpkin Heart goes to children's hospital foundations. We're still finalising which ones, and we'll name them here before we sell a single one.

How it works

Put it out and forget about it.

Push it in

The stake goes into the grass in about the time it takes to read this. No tools, no ladder, no extension cord across the path.

It turns itself on

There's a small sensor in the back, so it comes on when it gets dark and runs all through October on three AAA batteries. Nothing to plug in, nothing to remember.

A new face every year

The sign itself lasts. Each September there's a new face to slip on the front, so you're not buying the whole thing again and it doesn't end up in the bin.

Not yet

We're not selling these until next year.

They'll be ready for Halloween 2027. Leave your email and we'll tell you when they are. You'll get a number that's yours to keep, and the people who sign up now get the low ones.

No payment and nothing to cancel. We'll email you when they're ready, and maybe once a year after that. That's all.

You're number

That one's yours. We'll be in touch next summer when they're ready.

If someone on your street would want one, tell them. It works better when there's a few of you.