RECIPE FOR SUCCESS:

Change the way you perceive a situation, and you change the emotion attached to it. That’s the basic principal behind how “spin” works. Everything old is new again if you can change how people perceive it. The first step is adding a new buzz word to the mass vocabulary and voila! reinvention.

This year I decided to research the latest reinvention spin in summer vacations.

“Staycations” are what many people will be opting for this year with an itchy economy and rising gas prices. Staycation basically means you stay home and pretend you are having a good time. We use to call it “being broke,” but now you’re “trendy” being a tourist in your own back yard!

Finding 89,800 staycation websites geared toward making you feel good about this vacation option, a favorite was www.about.com, which offered strategies to help you plan the perfect staycation including budgeting and photos you should take.

If hanging with the family at home doesn’t say good time to you, why not try a “mancation.” Google offers 14,100 sites on this new spin on male bonding.

Mancations are promoted as vacations to “get away from the female influences in your life.”

Itch and scratch where and when you like, drink beer till you puke, and never make your bed, no wife or girlfriend telling you what to do. Sounds like heaven for most men.

Get ready for a testosterone amped vacation: auto racing schools, golf resorts, scuba destinations, gambling weekends, river rafting and more.

Www.mancation.com prides itself in becoming the “the premier website for locating great vacations for you and your friends ... Man Style.” It takes the basic premise of guys’ night out to a whole new level.

There are 2.7 million Google sites for “girlfriend getaways.” Obviously from the numbers, we need to get away more than the men do!

Sites like www.gutsy womentravel.com offer, “Vacations and tours for women-only shopping, cooking, mind-body and more,” nationally and internationally.

Www.beaches.com offers BFF (best friends forever) getaways to exotic beach locations featuring spa services, Pilates, yoga — total pampering vacations.

From bachelorette blow out weekends to exotic wine tasting excursions, girl bonding is a niche market that’s generating millions of dollars for the travel industry.

The Affinia Hotel in New York is promoting a “Sex and the City Girlfriend Getaway Weekend” where you can drink champagne, visit the Magnolia bakery where Miranda bought her cup cakes, tour location sites where the movie was shot, and scope out foot candy at Jimmy Choo’s. “Indulge, relax, unwind, let go, spend savvy” are the buzzwords on this website.

My recipe for success this summer takes ideas from all these concepts. My BFF, (husband, Stan), and I are going to Montreal for Formula One racing and then on to Toronto for a few days in romantic Niagara Falls.

We’ll drive from Canada through New York, with a stop at the newly opened Woodstock Museum winding up in the Hampton’s on Long Island visiting my girlfriends.

Then it’s back to our favorite vacation spot in the world, Newport Beach, where friends from around the country will be visiting us for their summer vacations, and we’ll be playing tourists in our own back yard.

Whatever plan you choose, just have fun!

BARBARA VENEZIA is the chairman of the Santa Ana Hts. Redevelopment Project Advisor Committee and was the co-creator of the cooking show “At Home on the Range” with John Crean.