TikTok’s Favorite DIY Party Pro Julie Sousa Bids Farewell to Stunning Boston Home Where She Brought Her Most Viral Events to Life

As an influencer specializing in DIY hosting tips, TikTok and Instagram star Julie Sousa’s creativity has no limits—however, the same cannot be said for the Boston home where she has spent the last few years bringing her colorful and whimsical party setups to life.

So, Sousa, 34, who is best known to her social media fans as The Avant Garde, is preparing to relocate to a new home more than capable of accommodating her family and her brilliant imagination. But not before she opens up the doors of the home where she found online fame in the latest installment of Celebrity Sanctuary.

The digital creator, who was named one of Forbes' Top Creators for Home Improvement in 2025, has amassed millions of followers across her social media platforms thanks to the beautiful, yet budget-friendly decorating setups she shares in easy-to-follow demonstration videos.

Sousa specializes in inventive oversized installations that make every holiday and event feel festive, from making a football goal post out of pool noodles to celebrate the Super Bowl to transforming her living room to look like the set of “Stranger Things” for the Netflix series' finale. 

But her latest project is arguably her biggest to date—and will take far more time than the few days or hours she allows herself to complete her party decorations: the renovation of her new home, which she is in the process of transforming into a dream sanctuary for her family and the perfect blank canvas for her vivid imagination.

Luckily, being crafty has always come naturally to Sousa, and she tells Realtor.com® she had been reimagining interior spaces using affordable, everyday items long before she ever shared her work with the world and gained enough momentum to quit her corporate career and take on clients.

“I’ve always loved being creative,” she says. “I remember one time where I really wanted to help one of my brothers decorate his room so I grabbed a bunch of CDs that we had in the house and used the shiny side and made him an entire wall of CDs.”

Now that the self-taught Boston-based decorator creates content full time, her personal home serves as her workspace, and projects often take over its common areas.

For the most part, Sousa says husband Dave Consiglio, 40, and their 2-year-old son, Axel, find it delightful that the family home is constantly covered in fun decorations, though she admits they “probably would love to have a space that is home at the end of the day.”

While Sousa has been able to carve out some special spaces just for herself and her family inside their current home, she came to the conclusion that the 2021-built, two-bedroom, two-bathroom, 2,000-square-foot transitional home that she bought five years ago just isn’t cutting it anymore.

To solve her space and storage issues, Sousa recently purchased a much larger home with a layout that better lends itself to having designated areas for work and home life.

The six-bedroom, four-bathroom, 5,713-square-foot midcentury modern residence with a pool is now being spruced up for Sousa, her family, and their two dogs, Max and Lila.

As Sousa awaits her projected March 2026 move, she shares the features she’s most looking forward to at the new house, and reminisces about the meaningful rooms she made at the home she’s leaving behind.

Architecturally speaking, I would say this home is a bit transitional. It is 2,000 square feet. It is two bathrooms, technically two bedrooms, but it's really three—just one doesn't have a closet. 

It was, in a lot of ways, perfect, because I always saw myself overlooking the city. Since I was a little girl, ever since I could remember, my dream was to live in Boston, and we have the most incredible view here.

I remember coming up the stairs and just seeing these three glass sliders and a perfect view of the Boston skyline and I was like, “I will do whatever it takes. Run as many numbers as I need to figure out how much money I need to hunt down in order to get this place.” And we did it, thank God.

I was actually under agreement for a different apartment at the time during COVID, and I was like, “Can we please back out? I need this one instead.” 

I love this home that I live in now and everything that I've done to it, but I wish it was cleaner. I wish it was more contemporary, more of a blank slate. 

My roof deck used to have rubber flooring. I put down pavers and turf, switched out the railings from black plastic vinyl to glass railings so you could have more of that seamless view of the city. I put in a crazy rock wall that went super viral. My son's nursery, completely redone.

My guest room at one point used to be beautiful, but now it's a storage room, which is why we're leaving.

I need more space for content. Where we live right now, especially with my son, the two dogs, and having a full team [of two], it gets a little tight for work. 

My sanctuaries, I would consider my son's room and my bedroom. My son's room because there was a lot of emotion that went into that design. It had a lot to do with my childhood upbringing and how much “Tarzan” meant to me growing up. 

The most sentimental piece in that room is the artwork that I did for him. The room was very much inspired by the movie "Tarzan." In that movie there's a scene where Tarzan goes up to his mother, Kala. They touch hands and she closes her hand over his hands. It symbolizes love and family.

I basically took that scene and transformed it into something more abstract and painted it for him. It sits on his walls today. It's a way to tie the design back to him.

I really poured my heart and soul into that. There's a lot of meaning in that room. 

Once you walk into his nursery, the first thing you notice is how moody it is. It's navy, but if you start to look a little closer, you'll see that the walls are all a very faint forest pattern, very leafy. I did that intentionally to make it feel like you're through the forest.

Then across the room, you see this massive tree engulfing you and it spreads from the walls to the ceiling. It encapsulates you into this perfect little moment that is his accent chair underneath these glowing pendants.

The idea behind the pendants were they were supposed to resemble apples. You know how when you're little and you draw trees and you draw little red circles for apples? That was the idea behind that. They’re gray cylinders, but the form is the same.

So you got this child-looking tree with these cement pendants that resemble the form of apples, and a yellow rocking chair underneath this green tree—it's just the perfect little moment.

Whenever I've put him down for a nap, it's nice because I'm rocking him in his chair and I get to spend time in there with him. 

Even though his room is a little bit louder, I still created it in a way that it can be relaxing [by] using cool tone colors. You have your greens and your blues to evoke that sense of relaxation without necessarily making it boring.

Whenever I go in there, I genuinely feel like I'm being encapsulated by the design and it's like a warm hug. Whereas my room feels like the place I like to go to when I need to relax my mind. It's very clean, contemporary, just no noise visually, so it's where I go to Zen. 

If you were to walk into my bedroom, the first thing you would notice is the ceiling panels, which are designed to bring your eyes directly to the bedroom wall because of the vertical lines. As you make your way down, you'll start to notice the lighting around the perimeter. It's very soft, glow lighting.

Then, of course, my bed frame is the focal point in the space. It's just an upholstered bed with an iron frame, but it's very clean.

There's also this wallpaper on the wall that is very much textured, but not visually busy. You can see the texture and you can feel that it's there, but you'd have to go up and touch it in order to get a sense of it. 

What I wanted to convey in that design is just calmness, relaxation, and I feel like it does that. It’s like an escape because my mind is very loud. Having ADHD, it's always going a million miles an hour, so sanctuary to me is a place that I can run to when I do want to relax and just feel at peace. 

In my bedroom, my favorite piece is my bed. It’s a Restoration Hardware bed. It's nothing crazy, but it was my dream bed. I remember seeing it at the Restoration Hardware outlet and I was like, “I got to take her.”

It feels so timeless and it's so well-built. You can see the craftsmanship on it. I would also argue that the mattress is one of my favorite things because it really does make me feel at home and relaxed. 

I spend every night and every morning in that room. It's great, but as we've outgrown the house, everything starts to feel a little bit chaotic. Once we move, this will start to feel exactly how I originally planned for this to be: decluttered and relaxing.

It's tough. I'm often living in these setups. Whereas in this new home, I'll have a dedicated studio and an area just for the setups. We're talking three floors at this point, so even if I do have to bleed a little bit into the home space, there's still enough room for me to just get away from that.

At the end of the day, I can just close the door and go right upstairs and continue to live in the home and separate the church and state. 

The home that I've selected is midcentury modern so it already has the architectural structure that I've always wanted so it's going to be easier to work with. I fell in love with that. Also, there's so much character. The ceilings are wooden, there's beams everywhere. It is 5,713 square feet, six bedrooms, and four bath. 

I think there's plenty of room this time around that I can actually transform a space and then just go back at the end of the day. 

[The] studio area is basically a second apartment because there's its own kitchen, it’s going to have its own living room, its own dining area, so I think we have plenty of space to kind of just run with it there.

The studio space would be where I do smaller setups, where it's just more content-driven, but not necessarily hosting guests, whereas the other [event] space is more for the bigger parties when I actually throw and host a lot of people.

We have a pool this time around, so I'm excited for outdoor hosting. That's something that I haven't had the pleasure of doing much here in the city, so I'm very excited about that.