Prepping for Retro Pixel-Style Christmas Stockings

The original stocking design

Last year, as a first time mom of a 5-month-old, handmade Christmas stockings were an impossibility. A year later, I really have no excuse. ^_^;; The particular pattern I have my eye on is called the New Ancestral Christmas Stocking. I just really love this clean, modern take on the classic stocking. But of course there's no way I can just follow the pattern as is. In order to give it our special twist, it's gotta have some tasteful, geek flavor to it. And that snowflake looks like the perfect thing to replace... <cue maniacal laugh from knitter-scientist>

I already knew which pixel sprites I wanted to use: the felyne from Monster Hunter for me (because I'm a monster-hunting, cat-loving fool) and one of the dragons from Bubble Bobble for Dexter (because that's one of the first NES games I ever played and Mario is overused). After much deliberation, K chose Simon Belmont from Castlevania:

The problem was I wanted to stay in the same color palette as the rest of the stocking. That meant limiting my colors to red, green, white, and black. Should be easy, right? Somehow, none of the color replacements seemed to work. If I made his hair black, then that means his clothes and eyes would be green or red. It just looked... weird.

So in the end, we went with the much simpler design of Simon Belmont from Castlevania II. I found the pixel sprites online, recreated them in Microsoft Excel, and then experimented with the colors till they looked right. Check out my Christmas-style pixel sprites:

Simon Belmont from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

Felyne from Monster Hunter

Bub (or Bob) from Bubble Bobble

If you've got a hankerin' to do any of these sprites in Christmas colors, feel free to download the source files here:
PDF file for Christmas sprites
Microsoft Excel spreadsheet of Christmas sprites

Question:
Have any of you made Christmas stockings for yourself or your family? I'm curious what they look like and how you personalized them.