It’s October, and that means that my front door is now being guarded (or is it watched?) by Mr. Bones, the spooky, gauzy dude that my husband has placed on our porch every October since 2007. He gives me the major creeps because every time I open the front door, he’s staring at me. It doesn’t matter which way we hang him on the nail of our entry, either. He turns on the breeze to stare me down. But in his defense, he was here long before me, so I adjust. 💀

Last year, in my attempt to entice more than five trick-or-treaters to our house for Halloween, I added to the theme with the fun DIY project that I’m sharing today. This cute little decoration was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest, but it was unclear who actually made and posted the lanterns. That’s one of the things about social media— a great idea can be shared by someone who doesn’t understand the settings of their account, and sometimes it ends up being just a photo with no accompanying information. What can you do? 

But in this case, it was clear to me that the project involved plastic pumpkin candy buckets and solar lights, and I figured, “how hard could it be?” Turns out, it wasn’t difficult at all. 

What materials do you need for a DIY solar jack o’lantern?

This kid-friendly project requires only the plastic pumpkins and some solar yard lights sized to match the top opening of the bucket. My lights were nothing special, just some off-the-shelf items I picked up at Lowes, and I found the pumpkins in the seasonal section at Walmart. Naturally, you want to be sure that some light will shine through the pumpkin buckets before you cut them, and you can easily test this by holding a bucket upside down over a lamp bulb in your home. If the bucket is translucent enough to let the light shine through, you’re good to go!

A couple of easy tools are necessary for this project, including a pen (for tracing around the solar light stem onto the bottom of the pumpkin) and either a utility knife or a cordless drill fitted with a hole drill bit the size of your circle. For safety sake, only an adult should tackle this part of the project. I used a utility knife, and to minimize risk of injury, I adjusted the knife so that only a small point of the blade was exposed. 

The first pass with the knife was only to “score” the plastic, and I made subsequent passes to make a deeper cut until the circle could be punched out. A quick test with the solar light stem, and adjustment if needed, and then reassembly of the solar light. 

The solar light cap should be slightly larger than the top opening of the pumpkin bucket, so that rain water does not collect inside. Mine look like the pumpkins have a little hat! The pumpkin buckets wanted to slide down the lamp stems after a few minutes, so I used a couple of heavy rubber bands— the thick kind that grocery stores use on broccoli— to snug around the stems, keeping the pumpkin in place all month long. Another fun thing about this decoration is that you can remove the pumpkins from the solar lights after Halloween and set them aside for next year.

My solar lights have a slight “bubble” texture to them, so the pumpkins also have a dappled glow. I can’t say that the solar jack o’lanterns made a difference in our trick-or-treater turnout— we still ended up with a mountain of leftover candy, as usual— but I guess changing neighborhood habits can’t be as easy as this little project. 

Maybe this year!