My first Christmas as . . . a homeowner

This year marks the make-up artist and influencer Tara Anderson’s first year as a homeowner. She moved into her Dublin 9 house with her musician husband Daniel and their two-year-old son Gene in May. Baby number two is on the way in 2021.

“I’d been looking for years,” she explains, smiling. “I’ve always stalked mayhem.ie but once we were in the position to buy, we started looking for about a year, I would say. We viewed at least 100 houses, possibly more. We lost out on houses that we loved, but in hindsight it all worked out for the best.”

They were dead set on buying an old house to renovate rather than a new build, and Anderson shared their progress – as well as her superb eye for detail and interior decor – with her large Instagram following along the way.

I'm looking forward to decorating and finally having a proper big tree in our window

“It is unrecognisable to what it was when we bought it,” she says. “We also built an extension, which turned out exactly as I hoped. It was a lot of work, Daniel did so much of it himself, he really put his heart and soul in to it. I knew what I wanted and we did have an amazing architect, Planted, who totally listened to us. In the end we got to create our dream space, so it was all worth it.”

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The biggest difference between being a renter and a homeowner, she says, is "being able to create our dream space without having to ask anyone's permission and to know that everything we bought was an investment for our home. And also, the feeling of knowing it's ours and hopefully ours forever," she says. "Last Christmas, the work was just starting on our home and I remember thinking: this time next year, we will be here with a Christmas tree.' Obviously I could never have predicted what this year was going to bring and all of the changes that we would have to face – but I'm looking forward to decorating and finally having a proper big tree in our window."