How to Kick It up with Your Besties This Summer Break ...

A lazy summer afternoon spent in a hammock strung up under the trees in your BFFs garden are that much sweeter when you can stick your nose into a real page-turner. Discuss book ideas with your chums and create your very own Booker Prize list of summer reads.

Not everyone can afford to splurge on a vacation but you can spend a day by the pool, riverside or on the nearest lake. Soak up the sunshine with your best buds in the good old tradition of The Wind in the Willows' Ratty and Mole. Float, chat and dip your toes into the water once in a while.

Don't let work dominate your life! Have a little "me" time with friends and go away for a weekend. Camping or staying in a B&B doesn't cost that much, when shared with BFFs.

Parks, beaches and picnic areas in nature reserves get pretty crowded from lunchtime onwards. Switch to breakfast instead, which has the advantage that ants and wasps are usually still too sleepy to care about the contents of your picnic hamper. Freshly squeezed orange juice, blueberry muffins, waffles, fresh fruit cocktails and sunshine galore; what more could a gal ask for on a hot summer's morning?

It seems every neighborhood has them in the summer, so you're never far away from a craft fair or flea market. They are great places to rummage for bargains, enjoy unusual artisan foods and get plenty of inspiration for your own art projects.

Never fret, you don't have to enroll in a course of the Michelin-star variety but the ice-cream and summer cocktail stuff everybody is crying out for in July and August. Homemade popsicles are delicious and quick to produce and books on ice-cream recipes are just as easy to follow. Put your heads together and come up with recipes and flavors that will make your local ice-cream parlor green with envy. And for something cool to enjoy around the pool, enroll in a mixology class with your gal pals and learn how to make cocktails that encapsulate the essence of hot summer nights. Manhattans or Mojitos anyone?

Fight the flab with a bike ride around your hometown's parks or nature reserves. Combine it with a picnic and you have the perfect afternoon out with BFFs. For more ambitious battles against the bulge, plan a weekend trip with your cycling gang. Remember to pack puncture repair and first aid kits!

If you don't live anywhere near the coast or major body of water, no problem. Local water parks are not just for kids! Slide down their amazingly tall water slides on your belly or wade sedately through their hot pools to show off your tan. Water parks tend to have great picnic areas and restaurants as well, where you and your friends can relax after your mermaid adventure. Don't forget your inflatable shark!

For around $20 to $40 you can enroll in a jewelry workshop or summer class and learn how to make stunning accessories with beads, silver wire and semi-precious gemstones. Best of all, these dreamy creations will go with all those cute summer dresses you and your girls bought the other day at the mall.

If leaving your laptop for just one hour makes you break out in a cold sweat, enroll in a LED class for around $20 with your BFFs. Before long, you and your egghead chums will create super-cool robots able to serve cocktails by the pool. Certainly something different!

Get together, get outside and have some fun – remember your sunscreen too ladies!

What are your plans for the summer?