Macy Blackwell tells PEOPLE she started creating content with only a ‘few hundred dollars’ to spend each Halloween season

Before she became the Internet-lauded Halloween Queen, Macy Blackwell She was a stay-at-home mom with a knack for holiday decorating, especially when it came to the spookiest season of the year. Back then, Halloween wasn’t celebrated much differently than it is now; She made a variety of themed recipes and decorated her home with skeletons, pumpkins, bats, and more emblems of fall festivities.

But a few things have actually changed since Blackwell, 30, started posting about the Halloween spirit on Instagram. tiktok After all, she no longer decorates and designs just for her husband, Cory, and their daughters, Lux, 11, and Thea, 7. The Texas mom now has more than 4 million followers across major social media platforms. He makes big impressions, but not so big that his work can’t be recreated by audiences.

Blackwell told PEOPLE that she “felt a little silly” when she first started sharing videos and photos of her DIY decorations and kitchen creations. He then realized the potential in the simplicity of its content.

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“People wanted easy things that anyone could do,” he reflects. “Obviously I’m not a chef and I don’t have any degree in interior design or anything like that. I just like to make things fun. I love food, I love decorating, and I think it turned out so well because it was really something that anyone could do.”

Has anything else changed since Blackwell’s online debut? Vacation budget. Although perhaps this aspect has not changed much and has disappeared.

“Halloween – no budget. It is. How much will it cost,” the influencer admits. Between the decorations and her annual Halloween bash, Blackwell estimates her seasonal expenses are sky-high: “We’ll probably hit six figures for a Halloween,” she shares, noting that she’s already started planning for the usually candy-filled fall holiday. Around June.

The costs don’t stop when the seasons turn because Blackwell can’t store everything in the house, despite deliberately purchasing a house with plenty of attic space earlier this year. He uses a service for storing larger holiday decorations, such as “large skeletons and giant Christmas trees.” Seasonal storage costs about $10,000, but he justifies it as a business expense: “It made perfect sense,” Blackwell says.

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The holiday guru adds: “We spare no expense during the holidays, but there was definitely an early one.”

Blackwell is investing his money and time in 2021. pumpkin arch over front porchThe DIY project ushered in a new era of success and financial worries. Blackwell says the images of her gourd-covered home “skyrocketed” her career as a content creator, bringing new eyes and interest to her pages.

Looking back, making the original pumpkin arch was a no-brainer, but in 2021, Blackwell says it seems like the biggest risk.

“I remember my mom and people really discouraging me from doing it because the materials to make it would cost me $800,” he told PEOPLE. “At the time, that was more than we had in a week.”

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But Blackwell was confident in his ideas and it certainly worked. Before she found viral success on social media, Blackwell’s husband worked as a firefighter. They now contribute full-time to content production that supports their family.

In the beginning, he was generating most of his cash flow from affiliate links, which was enough income for Cory to quit his job. But Blackwell says since hiring a manager and a full team, “at least 90%” of its revenue comes from brand deals. This doesn’t just depend on Halloween and the next holiday season, either. Blackwell found a way to turn a profit throughout the year.

“We’ve gotten to the point where all the months are pretty good,” he says, “I think we know we always hit hard in the Super Bowl.”

But despite the money-making content that has significantly upped its game, the internet sensation still doesn’t aim to shake the approachable quality that attracted its audience in the first place. She says her recipes and decorating tutorials still have a significantly budget-friendly edge, as do the “Dollar Tree DIY” videos she continues to make.

“That’s where I started: I started at the Dollar Tree. I could spend maybe a couple hundred dollars a season, so that’s definitely the root of it,” he says. At the same time, he is extremely aware of his target audience and operates from his vision of the person on the other side of the content.

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“Someone who is busy, someone who has kids, but someone who wants to make the holidays and really every day special and memorable for their family and their kids, and someone who wants to make the most of it without breaking the budget, without spending a lot of time,” Blackwell explains. “So I’m always aware of my audience, their time and their budget, and I always want to make sure I’m creating content for everyone.”

Long before Dollar Tree finds came along and went over budget, Blackwell’s Halloween spirit was formed as a child as she and her sister watched their mother go all-out for the spooky holiday.

“She would do all the decorations, all the songs, all the recipes. She would make everything so sweet,” Blackwell recalls. “After experiencing that childhood, I knew I wanted to do the same for my children. I couldn’t wait to make it special for them.”

Blackwell gave birth to her first daughter when she was 19, and in many ways she feels this prepared her to be a very diligent housewife during the holidays.

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“With my daughter being so young, I felt like I had to mature a lot faster than most of my friends did when I was 19. They were running into sororities, doing all these fun things, going out, and I was a mom,” she explains.

“You definitely have FOMO at that age. I went through that period, when I saw everyone my age graduating from college and seeing their pictures, I cried. I was like, ‘Man, that should have been me.'” Blackwell continues. “I quickly got serious and said, ‘I want to be a good mother for my daughter,’ and I immediately got to work.”

She remembers her first Christmas as a mother, when her decorating talent was still limited by a tight budget and an audience limited to her immediate family. Blackwell says his first tree was “pathetic” — “I couldn’t even afford a tree skirt for the tree, it was just a tree stand,” he notes — but it symbolized something that couldn’t be conveyed in high-rise building. the pines from which it has been raised ever since.

“I was so proud of that little tree, and I repost the picture on my story every year to remind myself of how far I’ve come,” Blackwell says. “And thankfully, I love what I do, which has kept me going. I would do what I do now for free.”

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