A few IC's that I'm interested in only come in surface-mount packages :0. I noticed that there are surface-mount to DIP adapters available. I've also read about using perfboard as a more inexpensive option. What have you found to be an easy and cost-effective to adapt surface-mount components to DIP? I have never soldered a surface mount component in my life, so it will be an interesting challenge.
Here is one IC I wanted to try to adapt(SSOP package):
http://www.ams.com/eng/content/download/1208/6983/526
Once I started dabbling with SMD I love it now. Through hole is a PITA with all the drilling. Check out several of the SMD hand soldering tutorials on YouTube, there is a great one by an Australian gentleman. There are a few more "snippet" videos that show some awesome hand work. (Of course there is reflow, and all the other fancy soldering methods as well, but I never did find cheap adapters, that's why I just jumped in)
I also etched some small home-made adapters. makes it easy to program chips and just try stuff out. I put the contacts on the edge of the board and use one of those mega paperclips to hold it in place, works great.
Good luck in your SMD adventures!
For one-offs and prototyping you can use the "dead bug" method, glue the chip upside down on some vero board and solder wires from the pins to the board.
Rob
It all depends on what style of surface mount chips you're working with.
SOIC chips can be used on stripboard / perfboard fine if you're careful. Anything smaller (eg TSSOP, MSOP, etc) you will require an adapter board as they're just so fiddly to try and dead bug. Also, anything that's not in a dual-inline format, like TQFP will really need an adapter board. That said, if the TQFP is a large enough pitch it may be possible to dead bug it. Not easy though - better with an adapter.
Other formats, like DFN and QFN, again if the pitch is large enough, and your hand is steady enough, are sometimes possible to dead bug (I tested out a DFN power amplifier that way once). Not easy, but doable. But in general an adapter board is needed for those kind of chips.
If you find you are working with one style of chip a lot it may be worth designing your own breakout board PCB and sending it off to somewhere like iTead to get it made for you - $9.99 for a batch of 10 boards (plus delivery) at up to 5cm x 5cm. If you can make the footprint so that it'll allow a number of different chips then so much the better 
Get creative.
Oh, and as for soldering them... I have one word to say on that matter: FLUX!
if the pins are big enough to solder, just solder jumper leads onto all of them. if not... i cant helpvu.