I've been stung a lot of times, but the sting of a bald-faced hornet was the worst. I guess I was lucky that the baking soda routine worked for me.
If you see a hornet nest where no one is going to hit it or fool with it, leave it alone. Bald-faced hornets love to kill flies, and the more they kill them the better I like it.
If you do cut one down as a decoration for the winter, I would suggest putting it in a
trash bag, spraying some bug bomb it it, and let it set for a while. Just to make sure. A friend of mine brought a hornet's nest into his living room from the cold and a little while later his house was full of p.o.'d hornets.