How should Uno welcome new neighbors?

[Unorthodox]

House next door sold!  That means I'm soon getting new neighbors.   

How should I welcome them to the neighborhood?

[Buster's Uncle]

I guess "Welcome to the neighborhood" is out of the question?

[Unorthodox]

Bah.  That's for the Mormon welcome wagon. 

[Buster's Uncle]

You're not a kid, and not everything in life has to be about freaking people out. 

-Fun as that may be.

[Unorthodox]

Ah, see, though.  This is the neighbor that gets to see EVERYTHING all year.  My preemptively informing the last 2 inhabitants about our Halloween hobby has eliminated the police calls.  (it was a child in this house previously who, quite understandibly really, thought i was pulling skulls out of a bucket of blood.)

I'm sure they either already know me, or have questions since the house has been up for less than a month, and they must have noticed the Chimera out front already when they came to look at the house. 

It's more a preemptive move to give context and NOT freak out the neighbor's kids.

[Rusty Edge]

I think talking to the neighbors is a good thing, and I vote for making them some Halloween style famous sugar cookies, and bringing a photo album so that they know what to expect.

I usually find that a little friendly communication among neighbors goes a long way.
Good neighbors are good to have.

Offer your assistance in dealing with insect issues. It would be good to know up front if any of them are allergic to bees, for example. It would be good for them to know that fog spilling out of your garage is not a fire or suicide attempt, though it may appear so.

Who knows? They may feel like they hit the lottery living next door to you, and volunteer to help as ushers or something. Or maybe they'd like to plan to visit relatives or go to a football game that time of year.

Pre-emption is a good thing.

[Zoid]

I'm with Rusty on this one



...and line the fence with skulls

[Dio]

I say Unorthodox should have given the neighbors shrunken skulls.

[Buster's Uncle]

They may have showed up with some.

[ColdWizard]

What Rusty said, but in that costume with the horns.

[Valka]

Rusty Edge has some good advice.

I should have been pre-emptive with some of my typing clients (I had a home typing business in the '80s and '90s, where people brought stuff to my home to be typed; most clients were students from the local college and a few from the universities in Calgary and Edmonton).

My grandmother was a doll collector and later on she made dolls. Some of them were soft-sculpture Cabbage Patch-type dolls... and others were "apple dolls."

Making apple dolls involves taking an apple, peeling it, carving a face on it, and letting it get brown. Really brown. My grandmother would hang these from the cupboards and shelf brackets in the kitchen, and you should have seen the expression on one of my clients' faces when she took a look in the kitchen and saw all these little shrunken heads hanging everywhere.

"Oh, yeah, I should have mentioned that my grandmother is a headhunter," I said in an offhand tone of voice, and carried on reading the client's term paper...

 

[Unorthodox]

Love the apple shrunken heads.  These neighbors have been great.  New ones a house down soon as it's up for sale.  I figure mother and father out front serve warning quite well.

[Buster's Uncle]

I s'pose I should get a picture of the apple head doll I did as a kid...

[Rusty Edge]

Rusty Edge has some good advice.

It comes from the farming empire experience, where there were lots of parcels and neighbors. There should be give and take. Transgressions are normally unintentional, and usually balance out. Favors are similar. Way easier than a retaliation spiral.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's not so much that good neighbors are gold -great if you can get them, but strangers who cause you no grief are okay- as that bad neighbors are something you really, really, really don't want...