Before she became the internet-hailed Queen of Halloween, Macy Blackwell was a stay-at-home mom with a knack for holiday decor, especially when it came to the spookier season of the year. Back then, she really didn’t celebrate Halloween so differently from the way she does now, she made a variety of on-theme recipes and dressed up her home with skeletons, pumpkins, bats and more emblems of the fall festivities.
However, a few things have indeed changed since Blackwell, 30, started posting about her Halloween spirit on Instagram and TikTok in 2019. First of all, she is no longer just decorating and creating for her husband Cory and daughters Lux, 11, and Thea, 7. The Texan mom now has over 4 million followers across major social media platforms, an audience she’s garnered by making big impressions, but not too big that her work can’t be recreated by viewers.
Blackwell tells PEOPLE that she “felt a little silly” when she initially started sharing videos and photos of her DIY decorations and culinary creations. Then, she realized the potential in the simplicity of her content.
“People wanted easy stuff that anyone could do,” she reflects. “I’m obviously not a chef, and I don’t have any interior design degree or anything like that. I just love to make things fun. I love food, I love decorating, and I think it took off so well because it was stuff that really anyone could do.”
Another thing that’s changed since Blackwell took off online? Her holiday budget. Though perhaps that aspect hasn’t so much changed as it has disappeared.
“Halloween — there is no budget. It is what it is. It’s going to cost what it’s going to cost,” the influencer admits. Between the decorations and her annual blowout Halloween party, Blackwell estimates that her seasonal expenses are steep: “We’re probably around six figures for a Halloween for sure,” she shares, noting that she usually starts planning for the candy-filled fall holiday around June.
The costs don’t stop when the seasons turn, because Blackwell can’t store everything at home, even though she purposefully bought a home with ample attic space earlier this year. She uses a service dedicated to storing larger holiday decorations, like “the big skeletons and the huge Christmas trees.” The seasonal storage costs about $10,000, but she justifies it as a business expense: “It made perfect sense,” says Blackwell.
The holiday guru adds, “We spare no expense on the holidays, but early on, there definitely was.”
In 2021, Blackwell poured her money and time into crafting a pumpkin arch over her front porch, and the DIY project ushered in a new era of success and financial considerations. Blackwell says the footage of her gourd-lined home “skyrocketed” her career as a content creator, bringing new eyes and engagement to her pages.
Looking back, making the original pumpkin arch was a no-brainer, but back in 2021, Blackwell says it felt like the ultimate risk.
“I remember my mom and people were really discouraging me from doing it because it was going to cost me $800 for the supplies to make it,” she tells PEOPLE. “At that time, that was more than we had in a week.”
But Blackwell was confident in her ideas, and sure enough, it paid off. Before she found viral success on social media, Blackwell’s husband worked as a firefighter. Now he’s a full-time contributor to the content creation that supports their family.
Initially, she brought in most of her cash flow from affiliate links, and it was enough of an income for Cory to quit his job. But since hiring a manager and a full team, Blackwell says “at least 90%” of her income comes from brand deals. It’s not just tethered to Halloween and the following holiday season either. Blackwell has found a way to turn a profit year-round.
“We’ve got to a point where all the months are pretty good,” she says, adding, “I think we know we always hit hard on Super Bowl.”
However, the internet sensation still isn’t aiming to shake the attainable quality that attracted her audience in the first place, even with the monetized content that’s considerably upped her game. She says there’s still a significant budget-friendly aspect to her recipes and decoration tutorials, like the “Dollar Tree DIY” videos she continues to make.
“That’s where I started: I started at the Dollar Tree. I started just being able to maybe spend a couple hundred bucks each season, so that’s definitely the root of this,” she says. She’s keenly aware of her audience too, and she’s driven by her vision of the person on the other side of the content.
“It’s someone who’s busy, someone who has kids, but it’s someone who wants to make the holidays and really every day special and memorable for their family and their kids, and they want to do the most without having to blow the budget, without having to spend way too much time,” Blackwell describes. “That’s why I’m always mindful of my audience and their time and the budgets, and I always want to make sure I’m creating content for everyone.”
Before there were Dollar Tree finds and long before she broke the budget, Blackwell’s Halloween spirit formed during childhood when she and her sister watched their mom go all-out for the spooky holiday.
“She would do all the decorations, all the songs, all the recipes. She’d make everything so cute,” Blackwell recalls. “I knew after experiencing that childhood, I wanted to do the same for my kids. I could not wait to make it special for them.”
Blackwell had her first daughter when she was 19, and in many ways, she feels like that set her up to become such a zealous homemaker when it comes to the holidays.
“Having my daughter so young, I feel like I had to mature a lot quicker than most of my friends when I was 19. They were rushing sororities and getting to do all this fun stuff, getting to go out, and I was a mom,” she explains.
“You definitely have FOMO at that age. I went through that time where I was just, I cried when I saw everyone my age graduating from college and all their pictures. I was like, ‘Man, that should have been me,'” Blackwell continues. “I got serious quickly and I was like, ‘I want to be a good mom for my daughter,’ and I jumped right in.”
She remembers her first Christmas as a mom, when her decorating capability was still limited by a tight budget and an audience limited to her immediately family. Blackwell says her first tree was “pitiful” — “I couldn’t even afford to get a tree skirt for the tree, it was just the tree stand,” she notes — but it symbolizes something that can’t be conveyed in the towering pines she’s since upgraded to.
“I was so proud of that little tree, and I always repost that picture every year just on my story just to remind myself of how far I’ve came,” says Blackwell. “And thankfully, I love what I do so that’s kept me going. I would do what I’m doing now for free.”
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