My question is: Is this possible or am I way in over my head?
Yes and yes.
But you don't need to be. What you need is a time just playing about with the Arduino LEDs and programming. Forget your actual project for a time and get into learning a bit of code. Look at the examples in the IDE,try them, see if you can change them and predict what changes in code will have with your system. Soon you will not be in it over your head.