Time To Celebrate

It’s time to do the happy dance. Or, if you’re just too gosh-darned tired to put on your dancing shoes, then it’s time to recline on the couch and raise a glass. We’ve all made it to KaDezemba baby. We saw sickness, and sadness, and loss. We also saw a lot of sourdough starters. We felt deep exhaustion, we lost heart, and then found hope. We struggled. We home-schooled. We home-worked. But it wasn’t all Zoom and doom. In the face of incredible odds, we survived. Because we were all going through it together. In sweat pants. 2020 brought all the flames and so we brought all the marshmallows. And we found so much to be grateful for. It got messy, but it also got marvellous. Covid has been a tough exam, but each and every one of us has graduated from the Gloria Gaynor School of Survival with honours. Bravo, us.

 In fact, as we pop the corks and clink the crystal, we realise there are so many things to celebrate, this December, quite apart from that special brand of South African survivalism.

We celebrate family, who mean even more to us now than ever before. We celebrate the kitchen, which became the nerve centre and ops room of every home - for confession sessions with tea (or G&T), for epic cookouts - and it even doubled up as a classroom. We celebrate sanctuaries: the quiet corners where we found solace. We celebrate outdoor living and give thanks for cool, shaded patios and pool parties. We celebrate the spare room, where far-off friends and family slept over, once lockdown lifted and our borders opened. In fact, we celebrate every corner of the home, which became The Haven and The Headquarters this year.

This December hol, whether it’s a vacay or a staycation, there’s a lot of celebrating about to happen, and while we can’t help you with party hats and those buzzy blowy things, we have so much loveliness designed to help you live your most luxe life.

Let’s unpack it for you. 

Celebrate the party-ready patio. Whether you’ve revving up for some large-scale celebrations, or small, intimate gatherings, your party decorations will look even more festive against a bright, cheerful, contemporary backdrop. The rustic chic of natural stone cladding turns your walls into natural features, and creates that 5-star bush lodge look. Pattern and texture are your best buddies out here on the patio, so go all Greek island or Mediterranean olé with patterned patchworks. Then, string up the sparkly lights and keep those cold ones coming.

Celebrate pool coolth. You’re rocking that pink leopard-skin kimono, but is your pool equally eye-catching? Italtile’s amazing array of pool mosaics will add signature Italtile sparkle, and (always remembering that divine is in the details) our cutting-edge pool copings are engineered to provide the final finish. Take a few steps back and examine your pool surround. Then browse our incredible selection of slip-resistant porcelain tiles – especially the wood-look and stone-feel masterpieces. We also stock the unique and stunning In2Out porcelain pavers. Right, you’re ready to dive into December. Blow up the inflatable flamingos and unpack the cocktail umbrellas.

Celebrate the kitchen. Cooking up a storm, or gathering the girls around the kitchen island for coffee and cake…you’ll be doing all the things in the kitchen. Give your splash backs some talkability with marvellous mosaic tiles. What’s your style? Petite patterned patchworks? Micro bubbles? Black and white checkerboards? Mini marbles or subways? Eco-chic recycled glass beauties? Metallics? You name it, we’ve got it. For sinkspiration, browse our Franke models… then add contemporary cool with the sexiest sink mixers in town. Oh, so many to choose from, but for starters, have a gander at the Idral Spring Sink Mixer or the Move Sink Mixer with Black Rubber Hose. Or go full-on fabulous with the Tivoli Bolsena Matt Black beauty.

Celebrate the sanctuaries. December is a beautiful noise and right now your home is the capital of Ho-Ho-Hoville. But sometimes you just have to take yourself away from all that Boney M-ness and Bublé-fication to recharge your batteries in a quiet corner. Your bedroom is a sanctuary, and we’ve found just the thing to add the hush factor to your bedroom floor: soft-feel, sumptuous vinyl wood-look tiles. Your bathroom, of course, is the holy of holies. Here’s where you can shut the door and have some shhhhhh while you soak away the day. The Victoria and Albert Terrassa tub with its velvety smooth finish does the job luxuriously. And the flicker of your oudh-scented candles will really make your lush Marvel Pro Cremo Delicato Lappato marble-look tiles gleam.

Celebrate the last of the best. This year, our mission was to Bring Beautiful Back

to enable you to Buy Beautiful at the very best promo prices. All the luxury style on promo has literally been flying out of the showrooms and the webshop, but there’s still time for you to grab a mask, put on your shopping shoes and snap up the last of the best. Even though our promo will run till the end of the year, we suggest you snap up these beautiful bargains ASAP.

Earlier on in this blogpost, we spoke about celebrating family. Well, we’d like to take a moment and shine the light on ours. The four very special groups in our extended Italstyle family: 

There’s you, wonderful you, who followed us loyally, all across our social media platforms this year, who shopped online when our showrooms shut down, who grabbed a mask and visited us when lockdown lifted, who could have gone elsewhere, but chose to stay.

There’s our suppliers – from the international design maestros like Atlas Concorde, Ceramica Sant’Agostino, Laufen, Smeg, Franke and Tivoli, to our local heroes like Ceramic Industries, Global Stone, Jeeves, Dominus Accessories, Dado SA and Victoria + Albert Baths.

There’s our partners in style. Like design diva Melanie Ewing of Chapters Interiors who keeps our sales consultants design savvy with ongoing training and answers your style questions on Insta and Fb. Like the garden gurus over at the Landscape Guild SA. And Evette Annandale of Annandale Design, the interior design maven who specialises in reimagining commercial space. 

Then there’s our Italtile people. Store people. Warehouse people. Webstore people. Marketing people. Logistics people. Numbers people. Creative people. Digital people. We celebrate your strength and perseverance; and that you shouldered the knocks and the store closures and the hard days with grace, and continued to help us keep the lights on and the engine running.

Dear family. Without you, there is no us.

Cheers to you all. We survived and thrived because of you. And frankly, there’s not enough prosecco in the world to fill all the glasses we want to raise to you. May you make the most marvellous memories in December. May you transition to an even more powerful, happy new you in 2021 – safely and in style. And may 2021 be a year of truly beautiful living for all of us.

Saluti, you superhumans!

Here’s to 2021-derful.

Ciao!