Celestial Pattern Gift Along-Santa's MugRug

Paper Piecing, I like it, as long as there isn't a lot of waste and not a lot of little pieces.  Well this pattern didn't disappoint, it is really nice and easy I could even say a beginner to Foundation Paper Piecing can do it, it is Alison Glass's Celestial pattern.  With her paper piecing patterns she always gives you cutting guides and these are really nice in helping out in keeping the fabric waste down to a minimum.  Alison Glass put out the Challenge for people to use her pattern to make something different to "choose and rearrange those same templates to make new designs" especially smaller gift items.  Well I dream big and thought it would be great to make a tree skirt for my MIL, but that is taking me a bit more time, so in spirit of the Challenge I decided to make something a little smaller and made Santa his own mugrug and milk coaster.

Now for some crazy reason my kids call Santa, Father Christmas, I think they get it from the cartoons they watch, but they are very insistent that this year we will leave him a cake and milk and some carrots for his reindeer. 

I didn't have any cake on hand so I put cookies in for the picture.

I will have to make something for the Reindeer's carrots next.

I like it that this year the kids are more interested in Christmas and so excited, in years previously they didn't really now or get into the spirit, this year is different.  We already decorated the tree, that is down at KokaRoka and this is what I wanted the tree skirt for. 
This is my work so far on the tree skirt.

I have made 9 A blocks, but stole 3 to make the Santa mugrug.

The paper piecing templates didn't take me to long, but I am also piecing the back.

Almost finished with this, just need another block to make and then I will sew them together and put a border around it.

The top has a lot more empty space, since I stole 3 of the small stars, I think I will make some C blocks, as you can see this is little more low volume, hehe, and I am trying to be scrappy, it is very hard for me to be scrappy, I always like to be matchy matchy, with my fabrics, but the good thing about being so scrappy is that I don't have to do that, lol.
Do you want to see my first S

This is why I don't ask my husband his opinion very often, I made this first pieced S and I asked him how I should put the stars (pictured above) and he points to the S and says, what's that?  It's an S for Santa, that doesn't look like an S he says and tells me to change it, so there you have it, a smaller mugrug with a matching coaster and a different S.

And look at this extra special block, it is signed by Alison Glass herself, from when I was in an Alison Glass charm swap last year at this time, she signed 2 pieces of fabric and I am adding one to the Christmas tree skirt since the Celestial Pattern is her pattern.