I thought Linux from Scratch was a pretty cool tutorial, but I felt having to wait for everything to compile was a bit nerve-wreaking. Is there a tutorial similar to LFS except pre-compiled binaries are used whenever possible? I would imagine that if you were running a specific liveCD (e.g. Ubuntu) you could just copy over a lot of the pieces of the liveCD for the system you're  building (e.g. kernel, libraries, executables, etc.).
Linux from Binaries
linux;binary;lfs
A less time consuming option is Gentoo Linux.  The install process starts further along than the Linux From Scratch book and there are options to install some of the bigger packages from binary to avoid compiling your Desktop Environment from scratch for example.As a side note the only reason to install Linux from Scratch is as a educational experience. 