Our (25F, 31M) neighbor (38-ishF) told us to take down our Halloween decorations because they're "tacky" so nobody outshines her house. How do we proceed?

My boyfriend and I LOVE Halloween. We love dressing up and decorating and handing out candy. This is our first year living in a house instead of an apartment and we decked out our front yard with tombstones, ghosts, bones, and what have you. We have strings of lights making an archway and a couple of faux lanterns. Other than that, it's pretty standard Halloween fare.

Our neighbors next door saw us putting up decor and started to put up their own. They had four or five blow up Halloween decorations around their front yard and so we unofficially announced, jokingly, that we were in a Halloween decorating war with them. We would put up more stuff, they would put up more stuff.

So, today, I get home from Walmart and start putting some stuff in the yard/bushes/front walk. Our neighbor (Let's call her Karen) walks over to me and basically tells me that our yard is an eyesore, it's tacky, and if we don't tone it down, she'll get the HOA involved.

I told Karen that it's all in fun for the holiday and she just threatens to call the HOA yet again before walking back to her own house.

I texted another one of our neighbors, complaining about her, and she tells me that if anyone "outshines" Karen's family home, she calls the HOA on them and complains about it being an eyesore. Normally they don't do much, mostly just politely ask for people to take their decor down, and they do.

I don't know what to do at this point. If she calls the HOA, I won't take them down, but I'm scared that we'll get a fine.

TL;DR: Karen threatens to call the HOA on our house because of our "tacky" decor. I don't know what to do.

Submitted October 30, 2019 at 06:58AM by Nordic_Nonsense https://ift.tt/36snpSi