A storybook Christmas: inside Maria and Joonas’s wooden home
Maria and Joonas are getting ready for Christmas in their first home in the picturesque Port Arthur neighborhood. Their enchanting wooden house was a finalist in the 2018 Finland’s Most Beautiful Home series.
A passerby might spot a tiny white face through the window of the green house. Armas the kitten has just moved into the home of photographer and account manager Maria Salonen and project manager Joonas Salonen—their very first place of their own. Holiday lights twinkle in Port Arthur’s wooden-house windows and in the shrubs lining the courtyards. A light dusting of snow covers the ground, and the countdown to Christmas has begun.
Armas is the Christmas present Maria and Joonas have long been hoping for. The couple started preparing for the holidays well in advance.
“Maria would start putting up Christmas decorations at Midsummer if she could. That’s how delightfully crazy she is about Christmas,” Joonas says.
The young couple has only lived in their newly renovated wooden home for a short time. Its warm ambience comes from the living room’s log wall and the beautifully restored tiled fireplace. Maria and Joonas restored the tarnished gold paint themselves, and now it gleams alongside the lights on the Christmas tree.
“We had so many ideas for creating a festive atmosphere at home, and it was wonderful to explore them during the renovation. I did buy some decorations for our old place, but here we had room for a large tree in a central spot, decorated to perfection. We finally have our own yard, too, and bushes where we can hang outdoor lights,” Maria says happily.
Maria and Joonas moved to the southwestern city of Turku after spending their student years in Tampere, in the Finnish lake district. They rented an apartment in downtown Turku while searching for a place with its own yard and two floors.
“We heard from a friend about a place whose owner was considering selling, so we contacted them immediately and went to see it. We made an offer, and by midsummer the deal was done. We got married that summer, and after the wedding we focused on the house. The renovation started in late August, and we put in long hours so we could move into our new home by Christmas,” Joonas recalls.
Beneath the old wall covering, they discovered a beautiful log wall full of old nails, which they sanded smooth. They also renewed the electrical wiring, choosing black Bakelite sockets and switches to match the home’s style.
Several pieces of furniture that had been in storage found their perfect place here. In the living room, right next to the tree, stands an old dresser from Maria’s grandmother. Its gentle pink hue is echoed in the entry door. Maria wanted the door in pink while Joonas preferred yellow, so they painted each side a different color.
Maria and Joonas usually start preparing for Christmas in October, when Maria bakes the first batch of Christmas tarts and warms up some mulled wine. In November, carols and seasonal flowers add to the festive mood. Although the poinsettia are red, Maria typically goes for white flowers, including hellebores and hyacinths.
“We need shades of green from nature for our Christmas. Spruce branches are a must—we lay them on our steps, and I snap pine branches for vases or big bottles. I also love eucalyptus branches: they’re great for wreaths or just grouped into a big bunch,” Maria says.
Maria and Joonas love to cook. For Christmas Eve, Maria prepares a traditional assortment of fish dishes which includes homemade rye bread. The main course consists of ham and different casseroles. For dessert, they make a classic lingonberry foam following Joonas’s grandparents’ recipe. On Boxing Day, it’s lutefisk, homemade ginger-almond cookies, and Swedish cinnamon rolls.
Both sets of parents and siblings are invited for Christmas Eve. Maria’s and Joonas’s families each have their own traditions, and for the first time, they’ll figure out how to combine them so everyone has a wonderful Christmas together. Christmas Eve morning begins with cooking rice porridge. Maria’s family traditionally heads to the Christmas church service, while Joonas’s family tunes in for Turku’s Declaration of Christmas Peace on television.
In Maria’s family, gifts are traditionally opened before the Christmas Eve dinner. This year, though, there’s no hurry for Maria and Joonas to unwrap theirs, since the best present is already here—purring on the staircase and gazing out into the quiet of a Christmas evening.
The story of Port Arthur
- To the west of the Aura River lies Turku’s VIII district. Part of this area is called Port Arthur, or Portsa.
- Port Arthur, known for its wooden houses, was built in the early 1900s as a workers’ residential area. It was named after an East Asian port city whose fortress Russia had blown up in a war against Japan. Legend says the mason laying the foundation joked that he was building a new Port Arthur fortress.
- In the 1970s, these wooden houses were almost replaced by apartment buildings, but local resistance halted those plans.
- Finland’s National Board of Antiquities has designated the Port Arthur wooden-house blocks as a nationally significant built cultural environment.
