My kids love playing online games! One of their favorites is Club Penguin. In particular, they love Card Jitsu Fire and Water. The games are played in a safe environment without advertising or a chance for kids to be exposed to anything (or anyone!) that they should not be. And for a limited time, your kids can play Club Penguin Card Jistu Fire and Water for free without even having to give a credit card. Simply click on this special link:

Free Disney Club Penguin Card Jitsu All Access Ninja Games

and then set up an account. It’s a great way to let the kids play online in a controlled environment for free and test out the Club Penguin system. After the special access is over, your kids will still be able to play Club Penguin for free, but the games will be more limited.

Be sure to take advantage of this special free Disney Game opportunity soon because it ends December 6.

(If you kids do end up really liking Club Penguin and want a membership, check out the Club Penguin Coupons on Sunshine Rewards)

Ink Garden is offering new customers a chance to take a $13 credit on their site to try out any of their favorite customizable products at no charge. You just have to pay shipping and handling. Use the code ForFree when you check out.

What can you design? 10 Holiday Cards, a notebook, a ceramic mug, 100 business cards, a mousepad, a placemat, a notepad, 10 invitations or announcements, or 12 folded notecards.

They have a lot of very cool design choices and you can incorporate your own text and/or images. I played around with the design tool and it is very simple. You can see the changes on the page as you are making them. I think they must have literally thousands of different graphics you can choose from!

This is a great opportunity to try out Ink Garden and pick up a cute gift.

Most of the time when you look for a list of freebies and samples on the Internet you come up with a lot of spammy links. I got an email today to do a review of MySavings.com and was pleasantly surprised to see that they have some great, legitimate freebies on their site! While some of them are freebies that I have seen in other places, most were new to me. What I really loved were the comments on each that told me whether it was worth it to try them or not.

For example, I had just blogged about Suave Dry Shampoo earlier today and MySavings actually had a link to take a quiz to get 2 free Suave products! When I clicked on it, it explained the whole process and even how likely I was to get the 2 free products versus 1 product or just a coupon (I ended up getting 1 free product–which is still awesome).

While I am sure that the list changes frequently, here are just some of the samples listed today: Olay Regenerist Night Renewal Elixir, Curves, Arby’s, Benjamin Moore Paint Color Sample, Beech-Nut Starter Kit, and Carvel. Visit MySavings.com to check out their entire list of free samples and freebies.

From now through February 14, you can send a free song to a friend on Amazon. The instructions on there are a little bit confusing but essentially you get a $2 off code (VDAYMP3S) that you can apply to any song that you send to a friend. As long as you pick a song less than $2 (of which there are many), the song is free. You do still need to have a credit card registered for your Amazon account. However, it will not be charged as long as you follow the terms and conditions properly.

Amazon has some cute suggestions for songs to send to “True Love,” “Hot Date,” “Best Friend,” “Crush,” “Pity Partier,” “Anti-Romantic,” “Ex You Want Back,” “Ex Who Wants You Back,” and “Anyone You Love.” Lots of choices there.

The code can only be used for MP3 downloads and only one per person. Click here for more information and full instructions.

(Edited to add that it is free today on both the Kindle and the Nook!)

Last month I asked my friends on Twitter for book recommendations based on books that I have read in the past and one of the books recommended to me was The Apothecary’s Daughter by Julie Klassen. Although it was outside of my regular reading genre, I decided to give it a chance. I ended up really liking it and actually just sent my copy home with my mother-in-law! Although the book is set in a different age, the language is actually very modern. In that way, the book allows you to feel comfortable in the era without having to struggle through heavy reading. The book has 4.5 stars on Amazon, so that should tell you something.

I’ll give you the plotline from Publishers Weekly at the bottom of the post but what is even more important right now is that it is one of the free Kindle books on Amazon today! Remember that even if you do not have a Kindle, you can still get Kindle reading apps for a lot of other devices (I have mine on my phone). Amazon rotates out which Kindle books are free pretty regularly so if you have any interest in the book whatsoever, you should jump on it immediately. The easiest way that I have found is to go into the Amazon website and add the free book to my account. Then I open up my account on my device and download it there. For some reason, it just seems easier to find the free books from the web interface than the device.

Apothecary’s Daughter Free Kindle Edition

From Publishers Weekly:

“Klassen’s debut novel, Lady of Milkweed Manor, was a Christy Award finalist, and her new Regency promises the same thanks to fine storytelling and knowledge of the apothecary’s art. Lillian Haswell yearns to leave her father’s apothecary shop in their small town and happily accepts an invitation to live in London. She leaves behind a handicapped brother, friends, her lonely father and memories of her lost mother, but finds that London holds its own troubles. Will Roger Bromley propose? What about the timid physician Adam Graves? And the dastardly Roderick Marlow? Will her humble origins ruin her chances of a good match? Complications ensue as Lillian is called home when word comes of her father’s ill health. She takes over the apothecary shop—illegal, because a woman could not dispense medicine—and begins again thanks to her father’s former assistant Francis Baylor. Klassen blends her tale well; each ingredient—romance, friendship, healing arts, mystery—is measured to produce a lively, lengthy tale that will satisfy Regency aficionados and general readers, too.”

Amazon on Demand is giving away a free $5 credit if you link your Twitter account and your Amazon account.

By clicking the button on the promotion page to get the credit you will:

* Connect your Amazon.com and Twitter accounts.
* Automatically follow @amazonvideo. The message “I just got a $5 credit for instant movies and TV shows @amazonvideo. Click http://amzn.to/hh8gTP to get yours. #get5″ will be automatically tweeted from your Twitter account.

I had to refresh the page a couple of times to get it to work, but it eventually did. It could just be that so many people are trying to do it right now. Once I was able to complete it, the page refreshed to tell me “Congratulations” and the Tweet immediately appeared in my stream.

We have a Roku that we stream our Amazon movies to, so I just need to go in now and pick a movie and click on the “Rent for 48 hours” button to add it to my account. Even new releases are only $3.99, so your $5 credit will get you at least one rental. Toy Story 3 is only $.99 for some reason, so you could actually get 2 new-ish rentals for your $5 credit. I’m not going to try it yet because whatever movies I decide to rent will be for all of us to watch this holiday weekend.

I’ve seen a few people take advantage of the deal and then immediately delete the Tweets from their stream. While I understand that you don’t want to advertise in your Twitter stream, I think that is cheating. If you take the $5, you should leave the Tweet. I guess I look at it from the business owner perspective since I have paid for Twitter ads myself and would be angry to find out that they Tweeted to get the money and then deleted them before people could see them. Am I wrong?

I think this is a pretty cool deal and hope that people will try it out, especially if they have never tried Amazon on Demand before. The offer ends January 1, 2011 and is available only for certain movies. I haven’t seen any yet that it didn’t apply to, but there are some movies that I would expect them to have that they do not (like Tron). Click here for more details.

The newest “Oprah’s Book Club” pick has been announced and it is “A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations: Two Novels” by Charles Dickens. The special edition book is basically the two books with some “enriched” content including “illustrations of 18th century fashion and culture in Dickens’s Victorian world, the early reception for both A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, a filmography of Dickens’s novels, further reading about the author as well as what informed the thematic elements of these classic novels.” You can get it for $11 at Amazon.

But the great news is that if you just want to read the two novels, you can download the Kindle versions for free as part of the Kindle Public Domain collection:

• A Tale of Two Cities (Kindle Edition)
• Great Expectations (Kindle Edition)

Even if you do not have a Kindle, you can read Kindle books using Kindle for PC (and read on your computer), Kindle for iPad, or Kindle apps for your iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android phone or device.

Of course, you can always get them free at your library as well. But between school kids reading them and all of Oprah’s fans wanting to get their hands on them now, you might have quite a wait.

Want to add a little magic to the day in your house? Have a Disney character call and talk to your child (or spouse!). For a limited time, Barilla pasta is sponsoring the calls. The characters available are only those from Playhouse Disney–Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald. Choose from Good Morning, Good Night, Congratulations, and Encouragement. Each of those is then further differentiated and you can add your child’s name.

Click here to send your child a personalized Disney call from Barilla for free! Hurry because the free Disney call offer ends September 20, 2010. Some exclusions apply. (Sorry residents of ID, WA, GA, KY, MS, NE, TN and LA.)

If you aren’t familiar with FUJIFILM’s SeeHere, now is a great time to try them out. They are currently offering 25 free 4×8 photo cards. You do need to pay shipping on them. Think about all of the different ways that you can use the cards. My favorite is to put pictures of my kids and create thank you cards. Then when someone does something nice for our family, I can send them a personalized thank you card. Another great idea would be to create birthday party invitations out of them with a picture of the birthday boy or girl. You can choose from 100s of templates and customize them however you want.

The 25 free photo card offer only lasts through July 17, so take advantage of it today! You will need to use promo code ‘cards-36′. How will you use your cards?

For a limited time, Kraft is giving away free sample-sized packets of its Sandwich Shop Mayo. The flavors are Garlic & Herb and Chipotle. I’m not a big mayonnaise eater, but the Chipotle one sounds very interesting to me. I can imagine it on a turkey sandwich. The samples are being powered by Smart Sampling, a reputable company for getting legitimate free samples. Many times the samples will also then come with coupons for the same product.

How will you use your free samples?