Free Thanksgiving dinner at Don Giovanni's

Wow. Talk about giving back to the community. I just found out that one of the nicer Italian restaurants, Don Giovanni, in downtown Mountain View annually offers a FREE Thanksgiving dinner. To anyone willing to stand in line. Last year they served upwards of 1500 dinners. No questions asked, no money required. You can be rich, poor, lonely, needy, well-off, come with a ton of friends and family, homeless or drive up in your Tesla, it's open to anyone and everyone. How amazingly cool is that?

We have annual plans with out-of-town family that weekend, or I would be all over this. Fancy pants restaurant Thanksgiving dinner, on them? You really can't beat that. They'll be serving up turkey with all the fixings. On the other 364 days of the year, Don Giovanni's offers great traditional Italian food.

Now everyone should go here on not-Thanksgiving and support such a fabulous local business!

Le Boulanger November promotion

A while back I posted on the perks of having a Le Boulanger card. In the months since, things got kind of weird with them and they stopped giving out a loaf of bread each month. There were a couple of months of no man's land, and then bam! the freebies are back, just scaled down a bit.

For the month of November, Le Bou is giving out two free mini pumpkin muffins to any customer that presents their loyalty card. It's no loaf of bread, but it'd still make a nice snack with a cup of coffee. So grab your loyalty card and head on over to the bakery and treat yourself.

If you don't already have a Le Boulanger loyalty card, find your nearest location here.

Free dinner for the kids!

I am alive! Two babies is exponentially more work than one. I did not expect to take this long a break, but am back and will hopefully be posting semi-regularly again.

Tonight is the last night kids can eat for free at Sweet Tomatoes. They've been running a promotion for Halloween week, and the last night is tonight. One free kids meal for each adult meal purchased. Kids under 2 are free, over 12 are the regular adult price. No coupon needed. Find your closest Sweet Tomatoes here.

So go eat a healthy dinner before you all stuff your faces full of candy.

Happy Halloween!

Plant exchange today at the Mountain View Library

Run by the Mountain View Library today from noon to 4 p.m. to participate in a neighborhood plant exchange. If you haven’t done one of these before, it’s an awesome opportunity to offload some extra plants, cuttings, seedlings from your garden, as well as pick up some new stuff to bring home. All for free.

I love plant exchanges, and haven’t been to one in years. I tend to get stuck in gardening ruts and always plant the same things, mainly those that are functional like herbs and vegetables. Being on a budget, it’s sometimes hard to justify the expense of purchasing plants that aren’t going to nourish my family. Silly, I know, as beautiful flowers or a garden can nourish the soul which is just as important, but sometimes I just get too focused on the mouths I have to feed. So I’m excited to see what my neighbors are growing in their gardens and to maybe score some new additions all for free!

The Mountain View Library is located at 585 Franklin St. It sounds like they’re also going to be starting up a seed library (also awesome!) and will be accepting seed donations too. 

Free Krispy Kreme doughnuts!

Who doesn’t love free stuff, and who doesn’t love Krispy Kreme? In order to appease us all for losing an hour this weekend due to the Daylight Savings time change, select Krispy Kreme locations will be giving away one free original doughnut per customer on Sunday, March 10^th.

Sadly, there aren’t too many Bay Area locations offering the deal. If you’re in the South Bay, head over to the Mountain View (2146 Leghorn Street) or San Jose (121 Curtner Ave) locations for your free doughnut. For a full listing of other California or US locations, check out the list on their website. I’m not sure if they all do, but the Mountain View location has the added bonus of having their conveyor belt in full view of the shop so you can watch the doughnuts being made and glazed while you wait in line. It’s kind of mesmerizing watching hundreds of doughnuts gliding blissfully by. I dare you to walk out with just one.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to set your clocks an hour ahead on Saturday. But don’t worry, you can get your free doughnut anytime during regular business hours on Sunday. 

Free Valentine's Day

I’m forever searching for a more frugal way to spend Valentine’s Day, as I find it hard to stomach the idea of shelling out $100+ for a special romantic meal that would probably just leave me with heart palpitations over the excessive waste of money being spent. Okay, maybe not a waste because I do love delicious food as much as the next person, but on my current budget, the thought of spending $100 bucks for one meal is just ridiculous.

That being said, I ran across a couple of freebies this morning that can complement your plans for this Valentine’s Day.

Redbox

Today only, Redbox is offering a code for one free night’s rental. The code is SWEET and can be redeemed online or at any kiosk. Find your closest location here, or text FIND to 727272.

Denny’s

Denny’s is offering free coffee today from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. No purchase is required and I’ve seen conflicting evidence if you need a coupon or not. Just to be on the safe side, here’s a link for a printable coupon to bring with.

Also, don’t forget you can still get $1 16 oz. Jamba Juice smoothies, today and tomorrow. My store was dead when we went in on Monday. Unlike what I’d expected, there was zero line and we were able to pick any smoothie and walk right out. They’ll also upgrade you to one of their larger size smoothies at a special price of just $2 per drink, and, they even applied the dollar price to a smoothie for my two year old!

Free admission to the San Jose Museum of Art

The San Jose Museum of Art is holding a special Community Day on Sat., Feb. 9^th to celebrate Chinese New Year. Each Community Day, the museum offers free admission to the public. Saturday’s free hours are from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

According to the Chinese calendar, we are entering the year of the snake. As part of their Community Day, the SJMU will have special New Years’ events including some hands-on art making projects, live music, and a lion dance at 1:00 p. m. All ages are welcome, and admission includes all the museum’s regular exhibits.

If you’re planning on attending, don’t forget to budget for parking near the museum. Alternatively, you could always take lightrail to the Diridon station across from the Shark Tank and walk from there. It’s a short jaunt just shy of a mile. 

Free pancakes!

Tomorrow, Feb. 5^th, is National Pancake Day. To celebrate the holiday, as well as to raise awareness for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and other local charities, IHOP will be giving away a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes to interested customers. In exchange, they request you leave a donation. Since they began celebrating National Pancake Day this way in 2006, IHOP has raised over $10 million dollars.

Okay, so the pancakes aren’t technically free, because as a rule, I don’t recommend going to a fundraising event and not donating anything. However, I do consider supporting this a frugal move, as you get a double bang for your buck…you get a meal out, and you can feel good about it since whatever you pay for said meal is all going towards charity.

The free pancakes will be offered between the hours of 7 a.m and 10 p.m. Click here to find the IHOP nearest you. 

Lucky Breaks

Every month, Lucky Magazine (I got my subscription for free…more on that another time) holds a decent number of giveaways for everything from lipgloss to cars, clothes to all expenses paid vacations. They list all the giveaways for the month in the back of each issue, as well as on their website. It’s kind of a pain to go through for each giveaway and enter your contact information and double check all the boxes say “do not send me any information” and no I don’t want to subscribe over and over again, but they offer some pretty great stuff each month.

I used to think this was just a spammy scam to get people’s contact information on mailing lists. But the volume of spam in my inbox never seemed to increase from entering any of these. And then about a year ago, I won this! To say I was shocked that I won something is a bit of an understatement. I was even more excited once I received it and found out Sephora was selling it for $50 a tube. And then I was even more excited once I started using it and found out the stuff actually works! Technically it’s to be used to repair sun damage on hands and décolletage (ooh la la), but I use it on my face. I spend a lot of time outdoors, and let’s face it, if you live in California, it’s pretty near impossible to avoid sun exposure. I was starting to get a lot of dark spots on my face. This stuff has almost completely faded them. It’s awesome. It’s totally worth the two minutes I spent filling out my contact information on the Lucky website.

Now winning something like this, while it validated the legitimacy of the contests for me, would not have inspired a post. That being said, yesterday afternoon I received an email that I won again!! This time it’s a Bliss berry-flavored gift set, worth about $30. I’ll let you know how it is once it arrives.

So I’d say that free subscription and “wasted” time I spent online have really paid off with $80+ worth of free product. I’m still kind of surprised I’ve won, not just once, but twice. Now I’m really hoping I win one of those occasional vacation, car, or iPad giveaways they have. I could really use one of those. 

AHH! OMG! Win Season Tickets to the Sharks!

Shh, don’t tell everyone (because I want better odds of winning), but the Sharks are doing some special fan giveaways this week as a thank you for not boycotting them for abandoning us all fall. Today’s prize? SEASON TICKETS! Yeah, it’s a short season, and yeah, it’s only 24 games, but hello, SEASON TICKETS.

You actually have a few more days to enter, and can also still enter for the previous days’ prizes. These include dropping the puck on the home opener, having lunch with some of the players, and even going on a road trip with the team. Heck, even if you don’t like hockey (and if you don’t you’re weird) you should still enter because if you win, you could always sell your prize for the cash. Or you know, give it to me. 

Free bread!

Like bread? (PSA: If you don’t, you’re weird) Like FREE bread? Grab a loyalty card at any Le Boulanger location, register it online, and enjoy a free loaf of bread, every month. That’s it. You don’t have to accrue points or buy lots of expensive deliciousness, and they still give you a free loaf every single month. Did I mention it’s free?

Honestly, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t know about this program. Hot, fresh, gourmet bread is awesome. Once you have a registered card, it will automatically load your free items. Each month, they offer a different bread-of-the-month and that is the one you’ll receive free.  Just bring in your card, they’ll swipe it, and bam, you walk out with your bread. In addition to that, I received a free cookie just for registering my card, and a free cinnamon roll on my birthday. If you actually spend money here and use your loyalty card, you’ll also earn points to earn more free stuff like coffees and lunch items. Pretty awesome, no?

I’ve only used this at a couple of South Bay locations, and normally have no problems with it. However, every now and again, things seem to not load onto the card. I’d recommend checking your card online before venturing out to the bakery just to verify your free items are on the card. 

Why Sephora is awesome

I’m a big fan of Sephora. Not because they carry just about every beauty brand you could ask for, but because they offer tons of free stuff. Seriously. If you sign up for their Beauty Insider program, you earn points for every dollar you spend, which can then be cashed in for products. You’ll also get a free birthday gift every year, as well as frequent free samples when you shop. If and when you earn 100 and 500 points within one year, you also receive special gift products.

When you sign up for the Beauty Insiders program, make sure to input your email. Normally, I avoid companies’ email lists like the plague, but sometimes Sephora will send out some real gems. For instance, I once received an email coupon, valid for 24 hours, for a full size Ojon shampoo and conditioner. When I went to snatch this up at the Stanford Mall Sephora, I found out that each bottle was selling for $25! So yeah, for a simple input of my email address, I received $50 worth of completely free product. Incidentally, I love what that shampoo and conditioner do to my hair and wish I could afford $25 shampoo. Hah.

Why else is Sephora great? Beauty Insider or not, if you have a product you’re interested in test-driving, but don’t want to shell out the dough to purchase the full-size product, try asking one of the sales associates for a sample of the product. I’ve done this a number of times, both at the Valley Fair and Stanford locations, for everything from Frederick Fekkai hair products to perfume to skincare items.  It’s a great way to try out that $50 skin cream to make sure it works for you, before dropping big bucks and finding out the hard way it doesn’t.

In conclusion, while I wouldn’t exactly recommend paying regular price for products at Sephora to someone on a strict budget, the perks of shopping there and signing up for their Beauty Insider program can save you a lot of money and give you access to beauty products you might not otherwise be able to afford.