It was a busy morning chez Frugalista -- shoveling snow, one kid to school by 8, another to gymnastics by 8:30, Epu dropped off at the El at 9:30, and the rest of us to our drop-in daycare place by, well, 20 minutes late. So no Denny's free breakfast for us. And honestly I'm not big on pancakes and I can fry up some eggs and bacon under a buck, so whatevs.

But I'd love to hear reports from the field if any of you got a free Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's, or even drove by a Dennys today. Long lines? Did you get to pick how you had your eggs? Was it a pleasant breakfast or did you feel like a head of cattle at the trough?

If you hit a Chicago-area Denny's, please let us know what the location was.

Photo by Mshades, used via Creative Commons license.

Mercury Magazines is offering a free one-year subscription to More magazine. This is a legitimate company, and I have gotten all the magazines I asked for through Mercury. They do ask you to fill out some information and offer you some trade publications, but it only takes a few minutes.

They're also offering Maxim, although I'm guessing that the overlap between my readership and Maxim is nil.

Confession: I just got around to posting about the free bottle of hot sauce being given away on Facebook because the Saints won the Super Bowl yesterday, and now all 12,000 bottles are gone.

But don't despair! You can still get something free this week: Denny's is giving away those free Grand Slam breakfasts tomorrow. That's a free Denny's breakfast on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

Check for your nearest Denny's on their Web site, and show up betweetn 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. tomorrow. I know it doesn't seem like some free breakfast food would be worth that kind of wait, but you never know -- you might swing by and find no line at all. It happened at certain times at certain locations last year.

Last week for the first time ever I tracked how much time I spent on money-saving activities, and how much I saved because of it. Then I forgot to publish it! So here it is.

Time spent saving money on groceries last week (Jan. 30-Feb. 5): 6 hours. That's six times the U.S. average of one hour. My figure includes time spent getting the kids ready to go shopping, travel time (we often walk) and store time, in addition to time getting my coupons together and looking for deals online.

From Suburbia is giving away the five $1.25 Chocolate Cheerios coupons that Pssst! sent her, which will probably get you a free or very cheap box when paired with a good sale. There aren't any entries so far, so you might have a high chance of winning. She's picking the winner on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Today is not just the Superbowl, it's also the third anniversary of the day I had a six-hour labor and barely made it to the hospital in time to give birth to Pebbles. So here's a gratuitous picture of Pebbles making her red velvet birthday cake (you know the mix was bought on sale and with a coupon) and looking disturbingly like the clown in It:

 

I already posted about the one-day only deals at Dominick's, which are pretty sweet and soon to be tapped by me. Here's the rest of the action in this Superbowl Sunday's ad flyers:

Jewel is offering its annual freezer deal today 2/7 and tomorrow 2/8 only, where you buy a $149.99 freezer from them and they give you $150 worth of frozen food coupons. I thought about doing this last year but read some online reviews that the freezer failed for some people after a short time. However people on Couponers Wanted who have done the deal before seem quite excited about it, so I guess some folks are quite satisfied. Today's also the last day to get Pepsi 12-packs and some 6-packs of bottles 4/$9. But to my frustration I don't see Sierra Mist listed in the choices -- what the what, retailers? I am almost out of Sierra Mist and I'm gonna have to go out and pay money for it before my parents visit next, and that's just not cool.

 

Until 8 p.m. tonight, Feb. 7, spend $50 at Dominick's and get a free Tombstone pizza, a free bag of Fritos or Cheetos, a free pack of Hillshire Farm Lit'l Smokies AND a free pound of potato salad from the deli. That's a hell of a lot of freebies, probably $10 worth, I'd say.

I'm psyched because I was thinking about a Dominick's trip on Friday and ended up putting it off until today. I'll probably go during the Super Bowl when it's sure to be dead, and if they're out of the freebies hopefully get a raincheck.

At Jewel this morning I saw a brand new display full of coupon books called "Value Your Heart." Turns out there are a couple good manufacturer's coupons in there that could result in free or nearly free products: $1/1 Fresh Express salads and $2/2 Quaker Instant Oatmeal.

While I'm kinda bummed that it's for instant not any kind of oats, still, I won't complain about free oatmeal. And the salads are $1.50 at Jewel this week, so there's a 50-cent bag of lettuce right there. At some point, they usually go on sale for $1.

Print this coupon and take it to an Ann Taylor store Saturday, Feb. 6 only to get $20 off a purchase of $20 or more. Pretty nice! You do have to try on a pair of shoes, but not necessarily buy one.

I would totally buy some camisoles with that if I had time tomorrow. Too bad I'll be running around pulling together my kid's birthday party instead of trying on shoes.