WordPress Custom Get_Archives setup?

I have tried a few different codes to display the newest posts, every single one has caused problems except for:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_get_archives

I am currently using the generic one that gets 5 of the newest posts, the problem is it’s only one line of code and I can’t add a time date or category before or inside the links which is what I’m trying to achieve.

The others I tried would really mess up my site and display the newests posts on every single posts which means nothing really worked since all it did was list the new entries in the main content as opposed to just list them in the sidebar.

Any help or links would be great, I have searched and I have tried solving this problem myself and I really need some help..
Thank you, Andrew