buy bitcoins from coinbase, transfer to btc-e, trade for litecoins, transfer to wallet and hold.

or bitcoins -> cryptsy -> ltc -> wallet.

i've traded on both sites and its worked out relatively well

Yup, that's exactly how I did it. coinbase.com->BTC-E.com->OfflineWallet. And I'll add extra emphasis on making sure you transfer to an offline wallet(one that only you have the private-key for). I used https://liteaddress.org/ to generate a unique pub/priv pair and as soon as the trade on BTC-E.com from BTC->LTC completed, I sent them to my newly created address. So if BTC-e.com gets hacked(it has happended before), nobody can steal my coins since the private-key is only on my machine.

There's also https://www.bitaddress.org/ for bitcoins.

Also note that both these pages work completely offline. You can git clone the repos. Copy the files to a trusted-offline computer and generate the pub/priv there for extra confidence that the private-key never left your PC.

ExtraNote: Do _NOT_ lose the private key. If you start to obtain lots of value in your coins, make backups of your wallet.dat or even better make sure you have the private-key on a piece of physical paper and properly secured in your home, in case of wallet.dat corruption/misplacement/deleted/etc. Don't end up like this: http://i.imgur.com/oJWtJjl.png

ExtraNote2: Ignore the chatbox(commonly called "trollbox") on btc-e.com. It's nonsense advice that'll lose your money, but it's funny to read. ;)