If you’re looking to take a break from your everyday life and retreat in a fairytale world, there’s probably no better place than La Balade des Gnomes, near the picturesque town of Dubuy, Belgium. Featuring ten amazingly-decorated bedrooms and a special suite designed as a Trojan cow, this place is certainly unique.

Formerly an ordinary Belgian farmhouse, La Balade des Gnomes was transformed into a magical tourist resort by architect owner Dominic Noel. Inspired by fantasy settings, ancient Greek history, science fiction and medieval castles, the resourceful Mr. Noel managed to create his incredible hotel exclusively out of natural materials like wood, stone and cob (mud mixed with lime and straw). “The hotel was created by people who have a strong interest in nature,” the owner says, but anyone with a rich imagination would certainly appreciate the unworldly design and decorations of this place. The names of the rooms do a good job of describing what you can expect to see when you walk through the door: The Legend of Trolls seems taken straight out of the Lord of the Rings, In a Moon Neighborhood takes you to a distant future where humans can spend their vacation in a hotel on the Moon, while Macquarie Island boasts a marine decor complete with a boat-shaped bed.

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First there was journaling, then came blogging, vlogging and even microblogging. The latest in the trend of recording life experiences is Lifelogging – recording every little thing that goes on in your life through pictures. As if people sharing mind-numbingly mundane pictures of things like what they ate and where they slept wasn’t enough, modern lifelogging devices actually help people take continuous photographs and videos of every single moment of their day.

So capturing only the special times of your life – like weddings, birthdays or your child being born – is fast becoming a thing of the past. With lifelogging, it’s just like downloading your entire life, minute by minute, and storing it on your computer. A master file, if you will, that you can always refer back to, to remember exactly what happened in the past. According to the fans of this practice, lifelogging helps them create what they call a perfect digital archive. This can be accessed any time, so they are able to recall things like where they left their car keys or remember a cherished moment in great detail. These lifeloggers capture their daily routine through pictures or video and store them on the internet. Some of them also record patterns of their mood, sleep, exercise and diet. A handful of users have also broadcast their lives online for everyone to see, and most say that they want to create as many data streams about themselves as possible, so the data can be collated and analyzed, leading to new insights and revelations about their lives. It’s especially helpful to those who are interested in health and fitness.

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Kei Akatsu is a Japanese student who wants to travel the world and take photos of beautiful women for his Beauties World Map project. But he needs your help to do it. Traveling isn’t cheap, so he’s turned to an online crowd funding service to fulfill his dream.

The Tokyo University of Science student spent half a year in Vancouver taking photos of cute girls from all over the world and putting together a collection for his Beauties World Map website. He actually managed to meet an impressive number of women, and organized their photos on his site according to their places of origin, age and height. But it was only the beginning of his great photographic experience. Kei Akatsu now wants to travel the world and capture feminine beauty on camera for everyone see. Sadly, he lacks the funds to journey across North and South America, so he turned to Crowdfire, a Japanese online crowd funding service similar to Kickstarter, for help. To attract sponsors, Kei mapped out the entire project and even posted a promotional video and sample photos.

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If you’ve always dreamed of smelling like a walking corpse, you’re in luck, because weird-perfume maker Demeter has recently launched Zombie for Him/Her, a new line of putrid fragrances for both men and women.

Say the Zombie Apocalypse happens tomorrow and you find yourself all alone in a world full of brain eating undead. What’s your best bet of staying alive when all odds are stacked against you? A Zombie Emergency Defense Station might work for a little while, but what if you didn’t have to hide in fear and wait for that inevitable moment when you run out of bullets and supplies? What if you could just blend among the walking dead without them even noticing the presence of your warm body? That’s where the Zombie for Him and Her perfumes can come in handy. Apparently the men’s fragrance is formulated with the scent of dried leaves, mushrooms, mildew, moss, and earth and will have you smelling like a decomposing body as soon as you spray it on. The ladies’ zombie perfume is a lighter version of the above “with a touch of Dregs from the bottom of the wine barrel for that feminine touch.” Since they’re only going to be available through April 30, you might want to stock up on zombie perfumes for the impending doom.

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Hong Kong is generally known the world over for its material comforts and affluent lifestyle. But there’s a dark  it as well that not many are aware of. Parallel to the wealthy citizens of Hong Kong there exists a community that is unable to cope with skyrocketing housing prices. These people are quite literally forced to live in tiny metal cages.

What’s worse is that the cages don’t come for free either. Stacked on top of each other, the 1.5 sq m enclosuress can be rented at a price of 1,300 Hong Kong dollars (about US $167) per month. These cages are crammed into a single dilapidated apartment in a working-class neighborhood in West Kowloon. Believe it or not, these metal living quarters are home to a whopping 100,000 people, according to statistics provided by a social welfare group called the Society for Community Organization. Other types of inadequate housing include apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. Only two toilet stalls are available in each apartment and have to be shared by hundreds of single, elderly men, who make up the majority of the cage-occupants. No kitchen as such is provided; there’s only a small room with a sink. Almost all the men wash their clothes in a bucket. Instead of using mattresses, the men use thin pads, bamboo mats or old linoleum in their cages to keep the bedbugs away.

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Alexander Pylyshenko, the owner of a private zoo in the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, has announced he plans to spend a year caged with two full-grown lions, in order to raise funds for a  proper care center for big cats.

If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because this wouldn’t be Alexander Pylyshenko first such attempt. Back in 2011 he set a new Ukrainian record, after he spent 35 days caged with two lions, during which time he even helped the female deliver her cubs. From the moment he set foot into the cage, the feline lover started living as if he was a lion himself. That meant sharing the raw meat the lions were fed with and sleeping on hay beds. He even built a toilet and shower inside the enclosure so he wouldn’t be forced to leave the cage at any moment. This time however, he plans on living with male Samson and lioness Katya for a full year, so he needs to plan accordingly. Alexander, who has studied lions his whole life, decided to spend time with his two fanged pets both inside their metal cage and in his nearby country house, where he’ll be able to cook. The Ukrainian beast-master says that although his lions consume between 5 and 10 pounds of meat per day, depending on the season, Katya has developed a taste for his cooking and enjoys mushroom soup and tomatoes with mayonnaise.

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Cerkahegyzo is a Hungarian artist who transforms common pencils into seemingly digitally-altered works of art. In reality, the miniature sculptor uses just a few basic tools and mountains of patience to create these intricate masterpieces.

Believe it or not, Budapest-based artist Cerkahegyzo manages to produce all these unreal artworks out of a single pencil. Some of his works may give the impression that he somehow fuses together the elements of multiple pencils to achieve the desired effect, but it’s only an optical illusion. He uses razor blades and needles to painstakingly carve away at the lead base and wooden casing, as well as sandpaper, files, and polishing stones to shape his intricate designs. Taking inspiration from established miniature sculptors like Dalton Ghetti, Misuta Tasogare and Kato Jado, the Humgarian master creates all sorts of incredible patterns that leave the viewer wondering “how did he do it?”

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Remember those liquid metal Terminators from the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies? What if I told you that kind of material isn’t just the fruit of someone’s sci-fi imagination, but a real metal? It’s called Gallium and it has some pretty cool properties.

So what makes gallium so special? Well, first of all, the brittle metal has a melting point of just  29.76 °C (85.57 °F), so if you hold it in your hand long enough it will become liquid. That alone is pretty cool, but this rare metal has a few other amazing properties. For example, it “attacks” other metals, like aluminum. As you’re about to see in one of the videos below, just a drop of liquid gallium weakens the structure of a Coke can to the point where it can be pierced with the slight press of the thumb. Gallium infiltrates the aluminum structure, compromising its integrity and making the can feel like tin foil instead of metal. Another interesting experiment involving gallium is called the “beating heart”, in which the amazing element is made to look like an alien life form. When submerged in sulfuric acid and a dichromate solution, gallium looks like an organic beating heart, due to the gallium sulfate which increases surface tension.

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Moms are always complaining about how their kids won’t swallow food. But here’s one person whose mother probably had no such problem. In fact, her struggles were probably the opposite – trying to make him stop! Today, Shoenice22 is making use of his unique talent –being able to eat anything, literally – to entertain people and become a YouTube celebrity. Oh, and also stop world hunger.

In the real world, ‘Shoenice22’ is known as Chris Schewe. He is aware that a lot of people think he’s a complete idiot, but he disagrees. “They’re wrong,” he says. “I’m a professional idiot.” Shoenice isn’t bothered by that though, he thinks it’s really the best, because he’s living in a time when he can really do whatever he wants, even stupid things, and become famous for it. And famous, he is! Chris’s channel is one of the most popular on YouTube, where he has over 200,000 subscribers, and some of his videos get more hits than a lot of those posted by real-life celebrities . But what could possibly be so entertaining about a man putting random stuff in his mouth and swallowing it? BBs from a BB gun, an entire bottle of balsamic vinegar, painter’s caulk, or an entire can of Crisco are just some of the bizarre “treats’ he’s eaten so far. It’s revolting and sometime even repulsive to see him trying to finish his “meals” while trying to hold it all down. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who felt seriously nauseous after watching his performances, and yet, a lot of people love watching Shoenice do his thing. Because the truth is, there’s more to him than meets the eye.

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It might look like just a colorful art piece, but Justin Moeller’s rubber band chair is functional piece of furniture able to sustain a grown man’s weight. The young industrial designer created the unique in 2011, by hand, from over 65,000 rubber bands.

Justin Moeller was in his final year at the Appalachian State University, in Boone, North Carolina, when a friends suggested he move past the traditional “rubber band ball” idea and use the office supply to make something truly unique – a chair. She noticed the strength and quality of the bands Justin was already experimenting with, and though an office chair would push the idea of what a rubber band is meant to do. Inspired by this suggestion, Moeller traveled to stationary shops in four different towns, buying up their entire stock of rubber bands each time, and even made some return trips once the shops restocked. He spent over $200 on the 65,000 stretchy bands and worked on building and perfecting his one-of-a-kind chair for 336 hours. “It almost looks like a fun toy that has been enlarged to a human scale where the user is sitting in a giant toy,” the designer says about his three feet-tall creation. “But though it may look like it is all for fun it also happens to be very comfortable. The back is made from rubber bands weaved within themselves to create a springy sitting area that softly holds the user.”

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Two Indonesian high school student have impressed judges at the national Science Project Olympiad with their ingenious air freshener made from from cow dung. Believe it or not, the organic product actually has a pleasant plant-like fragrance.

Dwi Nailul Izzah and Rintya Aprianti Miki managed to surpass 1,000 other participants at the Indonesian Science Project Olympiad (ISPO), held at the end of February, in Jakarta, and won gold medals for their original invention – an environmentally-friendly air-freshener made from cow manure. I know, that’s probably one of the last ingredients you’d expect to find in such a product, but according to the judges and everyone else who had the chance to sniff the girls’ air freshener, it has a surprisingly nice herbal fragrance. But it wasn’t just the smell that won Dwi and Rintya points. Their natural air freshener contains none of the chemicals found in similar commercially-available products, and it’s also more affordable. While a conventional 275-gram air freshener costs 39,000 Indonesian rupiah ($4), a 225-gram can of cow dung air freshener costs just $21,000 rupiah ($2). The two young inventors are getting ready to showcase their unique invention at the International Environment Project Olympiad (INEPO), in Istanbul, and are getting ready to file for a patent.

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Lord of the Rings fan Joseph Alvenaz has created an awe-inspiring 10-foot-tall by 12-foot-wide replica of Minas Tirith, almost exclusively out of sand and water. Believe it or not, this was his first major sand sculpture.

We’ve featured some pretty impressive models of Gondor’s capital city, including one made entirely from matchsticks, and one made from LEGO, but Joseph Alvenaz sand-and-water Minas Tirith is right up there with the best of them. The young California artist chose the iconic setting of J.R.R. Tolkien’s LOTR – The Return of the King as his first large-scale sand sculpture, and judging by the images below, it’s safe to say he did an amazing job. Even more impressive is the fact that he didn’t use a frame for his incredibly detailed sand sculpture, save for a single brace added in the top tower, after it was repeatedly destroyed by birds. Apart from that one element, no reinforcement or adhesive was added; the entire structure was made exclusively from sand and water. The white is made of out of a chalkish wash he applied over the sand.

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41-year-old Stanley Colorite, who calls himself “the Barbie Man” has been collecting Barbie dolls for the last two decades, and has turned his home into a virtual museum to the popular Mattel toy.

A house-cleaning business owner from Florida, Stanley Colorite bought his first  Barbie doll in 1997. Now he has over 2,000 of them, as well countless outfits and accessories. He admits it’s become somewhat of an obsession, but says he simply can’t stop collecting. If sees a doll he doesn’t yet have, or anything with the Barbie name on it, he just has to buy it. Every month, he adds about 20 new dolls to his impressive collection, as well ass numerous other related items he finds at toy shops, jumble sales and eBay. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty expensive shopping habit, one that’s setting Stanley back about $30,000 a year. It’s a lot of money, but the Barbie Man isn’t considering stopping anytime soon. Even though four of his rooms are already lined with Barbie stuff, he says he plans to go on collecting until all the seven rooms of his Florida home are full. He even considers gluing them to the ceiling or making chandeliers out of the dolls, just to make some extra room.

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Remember Mary Poppins, that lovable nanny played by Julie Andrews in the 1964 movie adaptation of P.L. Travers’ children books? Growing up I always asked myself if floating around with an umbrella was possible in real life. Now, thanks to the stunt of extreme athlete Erik Roner, I finally have an answer.

I remember wanting to climb on to the roof of my parents’ house to test out Mary Poppins’ umbrella-powered traveling technique, but as crazy as that sounds to me today, it’s nothing to the stunt pulled by Erik Roner. The famous daredevil teamed up with camera maker GoPro to conduct a “retro-tech” experiment and see if Mary Poppins was actually more than a delightful fairy tale. Using a sturdy garden umbrella instead of a parachute, he jumped out of a hot air balloon, over Southern California. “We’re gonna see if an umbrella actually slows you down, like Mary Poppins’ does…What am I thinking?” Erik says before detaching the umbrella from the supporting balloon and starting his descent. For a few moments, his umbrella flight seems quite smooth, but the pressure of the air ultimately turns it inside out and tears the fabric to shreds.

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How do you talk to a Giraffe face-to-face? By peeking out of the top-floor window of a very high house, of course. That’s exactly what the owners of Giraffe Manor, in Kenya, do. And you could too, if you went to spend a few nights in one of the 6 rooms of the old manor turned hotel.

The residents of this unique tourist attraction are the Carr-Hartley family, along with eight Rothschild giraffes, one of the rarest subspecies on the planet. The English-style manor was built in the colonial era and is part of a 140-acre estate in the shadow of Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro. Tanya and Mikey Carr-Hartley, both 41, grew up close to the house in Nairobi when they were children and always dreamed of owning it someday. So once they started a family of their own and the house came up for sale, they jumped at the opportunity. Since Michael’s family has been involved in the protection of animals for several generations, they do not mind taking care of the endangered giraffes. In fact, they love it.

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