Collage by Minna

Sometimes all your best friends are coming over and you need something fun to do because you’re sick of your regular routine. Here are some ideas you may not have thought of already—some are long-term projects, some are ways to pass the time on a day when you’re all dying of boredom—and we hope you’ll add your own ideas to this pile, too. I couldn’t have come up with this list without the help of my very own Rookie girl gang, so shout-outs to Tavi, Anaheed, Hazel, Rachael, Jenny, Lauren, Naomi, Pixie, Anna, and Marie!

  • Create your own club based on something you all love, whether it’s sticker collecting or Star Trek or snowball fights. If you haven’t met your gang yet, or you just want to expand the one you’ve got, finding this kind of club through your school or local park district might be the way to do it.
  • Form a book club. Start by reading each person’s all-time favorite book, then pick out books together once you know one another’s loves and hates.
  • Write your own book. You can each write individual books and have a weekly writing group to work on them. Or you can start a group novel in a notebook that you pass from person to person. Ursula K. Le Guin has a book with some good activities you can try to get the creative juices flowing.
  • Get another notebook for a group diary. You can take turns with it at school, writing about your day or whatever you are thinking about and comment on one another’s entries and write one another letters. Be as serious or silly as you want. Create your own language or code so no one but your girls can read your secrets.
  • Make a group zine or comic and distribute it online, either by yourselves or with the help of a zine distributor. You could also start a group blog. It could include your book reviews, your own poetry, fashion ideas, political rants, or whatever, but should definitely start with your girl gang manifesto because every girl gang needs one.
  • Form a band (you don’t need to know how to play your instruments yet—learn by doing) and have a jam session where you learn and play a bunch of songs by your favorite band. You can even dress up like them.
  • Write your own songs with your band.
  • Come up with and act out your own sitcom (including a theme song). Or film your own reality TV show, which doesn’t have to be real reality of course, but with lots of Jerry Springer–like drama.
  • Put on a play or make a movie. Horror movies, documentaries, and mockumentaries have been scientifically proven to be the most fun to make with friends.
  • Rent a really bad movie, put it on mute, and add your own dialogue. Or rent a really awesome movie that you all love, put it on mute, and see how many parts you can do by heart.
  • Make a series of how-to guides for YouTube on whatever your gang knows best, whether that’s cooking, doing magic tricks, applying make-up, or fixing up cars.
  • Choreograph a dance, seriously or like ones you did to Hillary Duff when you were little. Or seriously like the ones you did to Hillary Duff when you were little.
  • Take your band, play, movie, or dance to the next level and organize or enter a talent show or a battle of the bands.
  • Like to sew or knit? Form a knitting circle. Decorate girl-gang jackets. Get old sewing patterns on eBay or Etsy to make cute vintage-looking dresses. Make a quilt out of your favorite old T-shirts you’ve outgrown so you can have them forever without their taking up closet space.
  • Make DIY crowns or collars.
  • Have a group closet purge, exchange the clothes that you don’t want anymore, and donate what is left to a thrift shop.
  • Organize a toy drive for children in need this holiday season. This is not only a fun group activity; you’ll all feel awesome afterward for having helped a bunch of kids.
  • Volunteer somewhere together like a soup kitchen or a domestic-violence agency, or join Habitat for Humanity and help build someone’s dream home.
  • Plan an event around something you care about—comic books, crafting, feminism, environmentalism, whatever—with speakers and panels and activities. You can even do this with an online girl gang. That’s how I met the girls that I planned The Midwest Girl Fest with when I was 16.
  • Get all dressed up and to the Renaissance Faire.
  • Join one of those exercise classes that are totally fun and goofy like Zumba and laugh at one another.
  • Play Dungeons & Dragons. Seriously, it’s fun. I didn’t discover it until my freshman year of college, but I was totally addicted for a semester.
  • Start a weekly poker game or learn bridge. Gamble for candy.
  • Redecorate your room. Have your friends make collages or paint on the walls or Sharpie on your desk.
  • Draw plans for the giant house that one day you will all live in together.
  • Plan an imaginary road trip or backpacking trip. Get detailed. What roads will you take? What will you pack? Which crappy diners will you stop at?
  • Now plan that trip for real.
  • Now go on that trip!
  • Have a picnic in the woods or the park. If you’re a Twin Peaks nerd, model it after the pilot episode with cherry pie and doughnuts. Or you make it a candy picnic. We really like and support candy, OK?
  • Explore your own town, especially the parts of it that look like they are from another time or place. And the train tracks. Cemeteries are good places to wander, too—just don’t be obnoxious.
  • Photo-document your explorations. Pretend to be tourists. Dress up and take pictures in interesting locales. Carry around a doll or stuffed animal and pose it in different places like the gnome from Amelie. It’s a Tumblr waiting to happen.
  • Go to the mall or the park or a diner and just people-watch. Make up stories about the people you see, or eavesdrop and put all the weird things you hear into a zine.
  • Speaking of diners, pick your favorite one and hang out there for as long as humanly possible just talking and people-watching and drinking coffee. My best friend and I once hung out at a Denny’s for 16 straight hours. Can you beat us? Just be sure to tip the wait staff really well, since you are taking up a table.
  • Go record, book, or clothes shopping together. Pick out a new outfits, books, or albums for one another instead of just buying what you always do.
  • Have a tea party with tea, scones, little sandwiches, and crumpets. I’m not sure I even know what a crumpet is, but hopefully it’s tasty like a scone. Dress up in your fanciest clothes. Or dress up like Marie Antoinette and eat cake with your tea.
  • Throw a theme party based on something you all love. If it’s a TV show, have a sickeningly long marathon.
  • Have a dance party. Here’s a good playlist to use, or make one of everyone’s favorites.
  • Makeovers. It had to be said eventually, right? Do manicures and pedicures, facials, massages, all the stuff you’d have to pay way too much for at a salon. Use Hannah’s DIYs. Hair dyeing is best with friends.
  • Build a fort and spend all day or night hanging out in it, reading, napping, working on projects listed above, and doing this next thing which might be the most important activity of all…
  • Plot a revolution. Seriously, the world is counting on you, so get to it! ♦