Recently I had to design a theme that had required calander and to show 5 upcoming events/items outside of the sidebar.
The Events Calendar (TEC) didn't seem to support this out the box and with use of wp_query I was able to solve the problem, now I'm sharing it with you so if can be of help to others:
<div>
<?php $calender = get_cat_ID( 'Events' ); $calender_link = get_category_link( $calender );?>
<h2>Coming Up</h2>
<?php global $spEvents;
$spEvents->loadDomainStylesScripts();?>
<div id="tec-content main" class="upcoming">
<div id="tec-events-loop" class="tec-events post-list clearfix">
<?php
$todaysDate = date('Y-m-d G:i:s');
$cal_query = new wp_query('category_name=Events&posts_per_page=5&meta_key=_EventStartDate&meta_compare=>=&meta_value='.$todaysDate.'&orderby=meta_value&order=ASC'); ?>
<?php while ($cal_query->have_posts()) : $cal_query->the_post(); ?>
<div id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>" class="tec-event post clearfix<?php echo $alt ?>">
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
<?php the_title('<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="' . get_permalink() . '" title="' . the_title_attribute('echo=0') . '" rel="bookmark">', '</a></h2>'); ?>
<!-- End tec-event-entry -->
</div> <!-- End post -->
<?php $alt = ( empty( $alt ) ) ? ' alt' : '';?>
<?php endwhile; // posts ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<span id="more"><a href="<?php echo $calender_link;?>">more »</a></span>
</div>
Do with it what you will, if you want to show more/less posts alter the wp_query.
Hope the above snippet helps someone