Macy Blackwell tells PEOPLE she started creating content with just “a few hundred dollars” to spend on each Halloween season

Before becoming the internet’s acclaimed Halloween queen, Macy Blackwell 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, she didn’t celebrate Halloween all that differently from how she does today, she would prepare a variety of themed recipes and decorate her house with skeletons, pumpkins, bats and other emblems of fall festivities.

However, some things have actually changed since Blackwell, 30, started posting about her Halloween spirit on Instagram and TikTok in 2019. First of all, she’s no longer just decorating and creating for her husband Cory and daughters Lux, 11, and Thea, 7. The Texas mom now has more than 4 million followers across major social media platforms, an audience she’s drawn to. making big impressions, but not so big that his work can’t be recreated by viewers.

Blackwell tells PEOPLE she “felt a little silly” when she started sharing videos and photos of her DIY decorations and food creations. She then realized the potential in the simplicity of her content.

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“People wanted things that were easy and accessible to everyone,” she reflects. “I’m obviously 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 like food, I like decorating, and I I think it took off so well because it was something that everyone could really do.”

Another thing that’s changed since Blackwell took off online? His vacation budget. Although this aspect may not have changed that much, it has even disappeared.

“Halloween, there is no budget. That’s how it is. It’s going to cost what it’s going to cost,” admits the influencer. Between decorations and her annual Halloween party, Blackwell estimates her seasonal expenses are high: “We’re probably around six figures for a Halloween, for sure,” she shares, noting that she usually starts planning a candy-filled fall vacation. around June.

The costs don’t stop as the seasons change, as Blackwell can’t fit everything in her home, even though she deliberately bought a house with a large attic earlier this year. She uses a service dedicated to storing larger holiday decorations, like “big skeletons and huge Christmas trees.” Seasonal storage costs about $10,000, but she justifies it as a business expense: “It made perfect sense,” Blackwell says.

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The vacation guru adds: “We spare no expense during the holidays, but in the beginning there certainly were.”

In 2021, Blackwell dedicated his time and money to creating a pumpkin archway above her porchand the DIY project ushered in a new era of success and financial considerations. Blackwell says the images of her gourd-lined home “skyrocketed” her career as a content creator, bringing a fresh outlook and engagement to her pages.

Looking back, creating the original pumpkin arch was a no-brainer, but in 2021, Blackwell says it seemed like the ultimate risk.

“I remember my mom and people really discouraged me from doing it because it was going to cost me $800 for the supplies to make it,” she told PEOPLE. “At that time, it was more than we had in a week.”

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But Blackwell was confident in his ideas and, sure enough, it paid off. Before achieving viral success on social media, Blackwell’s husband worked as a firefighter. He now contributes full-time to creating content that supports their family.

Initially, she made most of her cash flow from affiliate links, and it was enough income for Cory to quit her job. But since hiring a manager and a full team, Blackwell says “at least 90 percent” of her revenue comes from brand deals. It’s not just related to Halloween and the following holiday season. Blackwell has found a way to turn a profit all year round.

“We’ve gotten to a point where every month is pretty good,” she says, adding, “I think we know we always hit it big in the Super Bowl.”

However, the internet sensation still isn’t looking to shake the attainable quality that attracted her audience in the first place, even with the monetized content that has significantly upped her game. She says there’s still an important economic aspect to her recipes and her decorating tutorials, like the “Dollar Tree DIY” videos that she continues to make.

“That’s where I started: I started at the Dollar Tree. I started just being able to spend maybe a few hundred dollars every season, so that’s definitely the root of the problem,” says- She. She is also very aware of her audience and she is driven by her view of the person on the other side of the content.

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“He’s someone who’s busy, someone who has kids, but he’s someone who wants to make the holidays and really every day special and memorable for his family and his kids, and he wants to make it the maximum without having to blow the budget, without having to spend a lot of money,” describes Blackwell. “That’s why I’m always mindful of my audience, their time and their budgets, and I always want to make sure I’m creating content for everyone.”

Before Dollar Tree’s findings and long before she went over budget, Blackwell’s Halloween spirit was formed during her childhood when she and her sister watched their mother go all out for a spooky holiday .

“She made all the decorations, all the songs, all the recipes. She made everything so cute,” Blackwell recalled. “I knew that after experiencing this childhood, I wanted to do the same for my children. I couldn’t wait to make this special for them.”

Blackwell had her first daughter when she was 19, and in many ways she feels like it prepared her to become such a zealous housewife when it comes to the holidays.

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“Having my daughter so young, I feel like I had to mature a lot faster than most of my friends did when I was 19. They were rushing into sororities and being able to do all these fun things, go out , and I was a mother,” she explains.

“You definitely have FOMO at that age. I went through this period where I was just, I cried when I saw all the people my age graduating from college and all their pictures. I was like, ” Man, that should have been me.’” Blackwell continues. “I quickly got serious and said to myself, ‘I want to be a good mom to my daughter,’ and I immediately took the plunge.”

She remembers her first Christmas as a mom, when her decorating abilities were still limited by a tight budget and an audience limited to her immediate family. Blackwell says her first tree was “pathetic” – “I couldn’t even afford to buy a tree skirt for the tree, it was just the base of the tree,” she notes – but it symbolizes something that cannot be conveyed in the imposing pine trees to which she has since been upgraded.

“I was so proud of that little tree, and I always repost that photo every year just in my story, just to remind myself how far I’ve come,” Blackwell says. “And luckily I love what I do, so that kept me going. I would do what I do now for free.”

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