Parker's Wheels on the Bus Birthday Party

Parker is so into school buses right now, so when we were thinking of ideas for his 2nd birthday party, I knew that a school bus theme would be perfect. He always does the sign language for more whenever we pass one on the street, and is so excited when they drive by our house!  There are literally days when I plan to leave the house at certain times so that we can see the school buses leaving the nearby school on our way to run errands. : )

I didn't really have a vision, I just started looking on Etsy and found some really cute invitations and from there the inspiration just started to flow.  After seeing a couple of bus tables on Pinterest, like these, I decided that our 9' long dining room table would be the perfect thing to morph into a big school bus.  It is at the center of our home, so it's a great spot to create a statement & also use as the entertaining hub for all the food, drinks and other decor. I placed a bunch of orders before we left for our trip to Florida, and when we got home I started getting to work for the party a few days later. The bus took WAYYY longer than I ever thought it would, but I am so happy with the way it turned out! The perfectionist in me wanted to do about 100 more things to it, but I had to just call it quits at some point. Scroll all the way down for a step-by-step on how I made it and the materials.

Invitations - these were an instant download, so I had to go to an Office Depot nearby and print them on thick card stock and hand slice them. They also came with cute, matching thank you notes.

Party favors, yellow bubbles wrapped in ribbon that coordinated with the theme. I then used the extra invites I had and cut out little buses to cover up the label on the bubbles.

I made the speed limit 2 sign out of adhesive letters from Michael's and construction paper. I hand cut the "2". 

I had Amy's Cupcake Shoppe, here in the Minneapolis area, do the cake and bus cookies. I love how the cake has Parker's name in the starts sticking out, such a darling detail. The vanilla cupcakes were from Wuollet's Bakery - their frosting is SO good!

I tried to incorporate orange and yellow elements, like clementines, oranges & lemons in the water, goldfish snacks, etc to play into the theme's color scheme.  I loved the bus cups with the striped straws. 

I handmade the banner out of construction paper, hot glue and this striped ribbon.  I just cut little triangles in yellow and white and hot glued them to the ribbon.

Once I picked the school bus party theme, I got a little carried away! I had to find a little sweater for P to wear to match. 

Below are the materials I used to create the bus, and also some of the party decor that I'm still waiting for in the mail that I ordered. I ordered these cute cupcake toppers and school bus banner, but am bummed we never got to use them because they didn't arrive on time. SUCH a bummer!! If you order any of these from Etsy make sure to give yourself tons of lead time so they make it on time for your party. 

How I made the bus...

I used this yellow corrugate to create each side of the bus. 

• I created one side at a time.
• I started by cutting the corrugate to roughly the length of the table. Once I had a smaller piece of corrugate to work with, I then made all of the precise cuts (it comes in a giant roll). From there I cut it down to the desired height. For me, this was when the corrugate was taped onto the table, and there were about 2 inches from the bus to the ground so the wheels looked more realistic. 
• TIP:  Once you have your corrugate cut to the size you want, adhere everything to it before hanging it up. I tried to adhere everything to it with it hanging on my table and you can see that I wasn't able to do the best job if you look closely. Also, I counted the amount of ticks on the corrugate between each window so they were perfectly spaced.

Bus Details
Windows & Doors

• Once the corrugate was all cut to the right sizes and adhered to the table, I started adding the elements to make it look like a bus. I was originally planning to hand cut everything, and then I realized that printer paper was the PERFECT size for the windows. I actually ended up using photo paper so it was a little bit heavier. 
•  I used legal sized paper for the doors on the back and side of bus, and the front windows. 

Lights, Stripes, Grill, etc... 

• To make the black light pieces and lights I just cut these out of construction paper. I used circular objects in our house to trace the lights to help with cutting.
• To make the stripe on the bus, I just used simple black ribbon so I didn't have to try and cut something that long in a straight line. I adhered it with tacky glue (and lots of patience, haha!).
• If I were to do this again, I would've made two stripes, I just ran out of time. You could also add something like PARKER'S BIRTHDAY BUS or something cute on the side.
• For the SCHOOL BUS letters on the front & back of the bus, I used black adhesive letters from Michael's.
• For the grill I used two moving boxes to create the front/engine part of the bus. I then covered them in the yellow corrugate. I cut two circles from white construction paper for the lights. For the grill I cut down black poster board to the desired size and then made silver stripes from aluminum foil. If you can find shiny silver adhesive paper and could just cut from that, I would highly recommend it, aluminum foil is a pain to work with! 
• For the Tires, I used shiny black adhesive squares I found at Michael's and just cut the corners off to make them circular. The back had a peel and stick surface, so you could just plop them right onto the corrugate without them falling off. I then cut small silver rims out of aluminum foil. 
• The stop sign was hand cut out of construction paper and then I used white adhesive letters from Michael's for the letters.

Okay I think that's it! The only other thing I'd say is that I used clear packing tape to adhere the corrugate to our table and to the other corrugate pieces and I HATE that you could see the tape.  I originally was going to take it down after I had built it and fix all of that but it would've been a lot of work, so I just had to deal with the fact that you could see the tape. So if you're like me and this will bug you, account for that when you are making it. 

​If any of you make a bus based on this, please send it to me or tag me, I would LOVE to see it!! Here are some more pictures of the bus while it was in progress, hopefully those help!

And lastly...We rented a real bus for a ride!

It snowed, so our eyes are totally squinty and shut, but it was the only picture we got! We took the whole party on the bus for a short 10 minute ride and P was a little apprehensive but when it was all over he kept pointing outside saying he wanted more bus.