Greer’s Best Buys:

When you find The Five Sweets Bakery, a hidden gem in Costa Mesa (behind The Harp Inn), your inner sweet voice will thank you. This is the homey bakery you’ve been searching for to get freshly-baked snicker doodles, moist and tasty red velvet cupcakes, lemon bars just out of the oven, moist and rich brownies, and more.

Owner Cassie Kuhen Orr and her incredible staff are personable, welcoming and offer fresh baked treats and candy for all occasions.

Stock up on Valentine’s Day candies, chocolates, and décor. Five Sweets bakes mini- and regular-size cupcakes in six flavors with choice of frostings, seven incredible bars, and breakfast treats, custom cakes available in favorite flavors: light silver white cake (white cake with a tangy lemon filling); German chocolate; Texas sheet cake (light chocolate cake with chocolate pecan frosting); and a three-layered Hershey’s chocolate cake.

Five Sweets also provides custom gift baskets and hosts baking parties on Sundays. Five Sweets, 130 E. 17th St., Suite D., Costa Mesa is open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday; and 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. For more information, call (949) 548-CAKE or visit www.thefivesweets.com.

Shop captures casual

Trovata’s flagship store in Newport Beach is a community hangout and great shopping find. And that’s exactly the way John Whitledge, Trovata’s chief executive and designer, wanted it. Shop at Trovata now, its men’s and women’s fall line is reduced 50%. Trovata’s is a fashion-favorite label, carried at Barneys, American Rag, Bloomingdale’s and chic boutiques worldwide.

The Trovata store, in an unassuming 1930s former ship repair shop in Cannery Village, sits across from Alta Coffee. Whitledge carefully chose every detail in the store to reflect his “East Coast prep meets Southern California lifestyle” apparel. He scoured the country for vintage hotel wooden hangers, recycled a dilapidated fence into wall paneling, and projects surf videos on a screen and places vintage Playboys on a coffee table.