I started out with technomancy's emacs-starter kit, but I started to roll my own (complete rm -rf .emacs.d) when I tried to then add functionality myself, ran in to trouble and got yelled at in #emacs for using the starter kit. Installed package.el and everytime I missed something from the kit, I'd install it myself (paredit, winner, ido, ...).

I would still recommend the starter kit for absolute beginners because it gives you a running start and a good idea of what kind of stuff is out there.