Is it a terrible long ordeal?
Or could you easily make say... eating animations for food other than bread.
And if you can I was thinking that a few things could be added to make the world seem more alive.
1) People groom horses.
2) Yawn.
3) People knit.
4) Dance a bit i taverns.
5) Give money to the poor.
6) cuff children on the ear.
7) Play with a knife when bored.

Any additional animations would be greatly appreciated and I'm sure Beth will get to that in their next installment. Although it is completely understandable why they didn't implement as many in this game...

And on a side note... Is there an animation for the deft movement perk in light armor? I'm really debating what to spend my few remaining skill points on and deft movement sounds really suitable for an assassin type character... If, it has an animation that is.

No idea.
Anyone know the difficulty of making said animations?

Yes. And difficult. Takes a lot of talent and skill to animate something well enough so it doesn't look like a mannequin.

Animations are difficult to make, and take a fair bit of time as evident by the low number of mods that make use of new animations.

Plotting the various movement angles and 'skin' shifts is not too hard, however actually implementing them in a way that doesn't look like you're swimming in molasses is. Arguably the hardest part is getting movement to flow more or less 'naturally', as it involves shifting multiple planes at once across multiple axes at once, which is a massive headache to get right.